Stephen Holden of the '' New York Times '' called the film " a delectable comedy " and added , " Francis Veber ... is a master of the modern French farce . And this film has the same tight structure and carefully plotted surprises and reversals as his earlier comedies '' The Dinner Game '' and '' The Closet '' . These movies are wonderfully frothy contrivances , built with traditional machinery from models that have been around for centuries ... Because its structure and the targets of its satire — vanity , greed and lust — hark back to Molière , '' The Valet '' offers a reassuring vision of a fixed social order , bourgeois to the core , in which virtue is rewarded and hubris exposed . " Mick LaSalle of the '' San Francisco Chronicle '' called it " an enjoyable farce , with lots of laughs and a strong cast . " He observed , " At 80 minutes long , it 's that rare case of a short film that should have been longer . And that 's its problem : It really should have been longer . This is not just a matter of wishing the pleasure might have been extended . The comparative shortness is indicative , rather , of the movie 's sole flaw : Veber does n't know how to end his movie . True , he knows how the audience would like the story to resolve , and he does get there . But he does n't find a mechanically interesting way to do it . After putting this wonderful machinery in place , he more or less just pulls the plug . He ties things up quickly with a couple of pleasant but lackluster scenes and gets out , leaving the movie feeling truncated . Fine . If he could n't come up with a great ending , at least he did n't belabor it , and along the way '' The Valet '' is a total pleasure . " Kenneth Turan of the '' Los Angeles Times '' said , " Making people laugh is the specialty of the house where French writer-director Francis Veber is concerned , and he is awfully good at it . A complete master of cinematic farce , Veber 's latest venture ... makes creating deliciously funny comedy look a lot easier than it has any right to ... While some of the sight gags on view in '' The Valet '' have roots that go back to the great silent clowns , Veber 's innate understanding of what makes people laugh , his gift for impeccable timing and for getting his cast to work together like interlocking parts of a fine machine , are difficult to resist . " Lisa Nesselson of '' Variety '' said , " Even though you can hear the clockwork mechanism ticking , comic craftsman Francis Veber ... has tooled another bigscreen timepiece with a fun premise and satisfying quotient of laughs . " The film was released in France and Belgium on March 20 , 2006 . It was shown at the Moscow Film Festival , the Vancouver International Film Festival , ShoWest , and the Cleveland International Film Festival before going into limited release in the US on April 20 , 2007 . The film eventually grossed $ 1,926,800 in the US and $ 27,400,068 in foreign markets for a total worldwide box office of $ 29,326,868
Vancouver International Film Festival
Vancouver International Film Festival
The Valet