The latest French comedy from director Patrice Leconte will surely divide audiences along well-established lines. If you hate middle-class French comedies, if you are not possessed with a boundless enthusiasm for dinner-party japes or humour at the expense of those less prepossessing and bourgeois than you, then My Best Friend might drive you gibbering toward the nearest secure hospital.
Within it’s snooty genre, however, it’s a fine specimen. Abandoning logic in favour of whimsy, My Best Friend begins with a, erm, dinner party. When friends start ragging on art dealer Daniel Auteuil for having no friends – huh? – he makes a bet with them that he can produce a best friend by the end of the month. Enter Pierre Aussedat a motor-mouth taxi-driver with a passion for trivia who dreams of entering Who Wants To Be A Millionaire? Those accustomed to movies where a popular high-school boy goes out with a loser girl as part of an elaborate wager will know exactly where this is headed, though the male friendship at the heart of the film does lend a novelty and tenderness.
Still, M. Leconte is pushing his luck with some nonsense about a vase and one seriously cheesy denouement at a, erm, dinner party. It chillingly points toward the possibility of a Hollywood remake with Robin Williams.