As comedies of cruelty go, it’s hard to beat the French when it comes to dispensing Gallic gall.

But an Americanized effort at just that arrives in theaters this weekend in “Dinner for Schmucks,” which attempts a trans-Atlantic spin on French writer-director Francis Veber’s 1998 social farce “The Dinner Game” (“Le diner de cons”). Veber is a mainstay of French commercial cinema whose works have often been tepidly adapted for American release (see “The Birdcage,” “Pure Luck,” “Fathers’ Day,” “The Man With One Red Shoe,” “The Fugitives”).

It remains to be seen how well the mean-spirited idea of “The Dinner Game” translates to American tastes, but for those who prefer their bile in unadulterated doses the DVD version of Veber’s film (in French with subtitles) is readily available.

“The Dinner Game” serves up a satisfying scenario in which the idiots turn the tables on the jerks.

The story rests on a deliciously wicked premise. Every Wednesday, a group of snooty Paris businessmen stages an elaborate dinner party. The chief entertainment? Each diner is charged with bringing a guest, “a grade-A idiot,” whose witless foibles are intended to provide the evening’s amusement for the snide hosts. The winner is the man who invites the biggest dolt.

Pierre (Thierry Lhermitte), a smug, wealthy publisher, figures he’s happened on a sure prize when he meets Pignon (Danny DeVito doppleganger Jacques Villeret), a schlubby government accountant whose hobby is building matchstick models of famous monuments and then talking about them endlessly. Did you know, it took 346,422 matchsticks to construct his Eiffel Tower?

But, as fate would have it, Pierre injures his back on the night of the party. And before he can call Pignon to cancel, the clueless, good-natured guest has shown up at Pierre’s chic apartment, and the two men spend a mishap-filled evening together in which the helpful Pignon unwittingly brings chaos into every corner of Pierre’s cushy life.

Throughout, Pignon is such a selfless nice guy, and Pierre is such an unregenerate stinker, that we can sympathize entirely with the guest’s benevolent bumbling and the host’s well-deserved suffering.

The farce never lags, and the laughs are as prickly as they are tickly. Think of “The Dinner Game” as “Revenge of the Nerds” served up Continental style. “You avenged all the idiots who attended our dinners for all time!” moans Pierre as the film draws to a close. To which Pignon gently replies, “Think twice before you call anyone an idiot.”

- Dennis King

Angelina Jolie

BY DENNIS KING

Having passed the half-way point of summer’s big-bucks movie season, film fans must now be asking themselves: Is the popcorn box half full or half empty?

Traditionally, Hollywood studios frontload the lucrative summer season with the hottest attractions in May, June and early July (the better to wring longer, profitable runs from blockbusters during vacation and school’s-out time).

So, late July and the dog days of August aren’t usually as packed with big tent-pole movies each and every weekend.

A quick look at release calendars for the remaining weeks through Labor Day seems to bear that out.

With box-office under performers like “Sex and the City 2,” “Prince of Persia,” “Robin Hood” and “Knight and Day” still hanging on to screens, with big-foot profit makers like “Toy Story 3” and “The Twilight Saga: Eclipse” still selling tickets, and with intriguing adult fare like “Inception” creating a buzz among moviegoers, the summer seems far from over.

But peer deeper into the bottom of the popcorn box and it looks like just a few fully blossomed kernels and a lot of grannies are left to be consumed.

This weekend promises a little “Salt” to spice up the multiplex fare, and the much hyped Angelina Jolie spy thriller from reliable director Phillip Noyce (“Clear and Present Danger,” “Patriot Games”) certainly qualifies as a big-deal summer release.

But beyond that, weekend release rosters just seem to get thinner and weedier.

The last weekend in July hosts a less-than-explosive trio of wide releases – the social farce, “Dinner for Schmucks” (a remake of Frenchman Francis Veber’s “The Dinner Game”), the silly, petcentric sequel “Cats & Dogs: The Revenge of Kitty Galore” and the mystical baseball romance “Charlie St. Cloud” – with either very specialized or very limited appeal.

The same can be said for the entire month of August, with few releases that truly qualify as “events.”

Julia Roberts

Will Ferrell and Mark Wahlberg’s cop buddy comedy, “The Other Guys,” ushers in August on the 6th, hopefully giving Ferrell a chance to make people forget about “The Land of the Lost.” Then on August 13, Julia Roberts goes all touchy-feely and philosophical in the book-to-movie adaptation of Elizabeth Gilbert’s “Eat Pray Love.” That shares the weekend with a film version of the obsessive comic-book favorite “Scott Pilgrim vs. the World” and the old Hollywood-style, star-packed action saga “The Expendables” (with Sylvester Stallone directing and starring with a crew that includes Jet Li, Jason Statham, Dolph Lundgren, Eric Roberts, Mickey Rourke, Arnold Schwarzenegger and Bruce Willis).

After August 20’s “Nanny McPhee Returns,” a sequel to Emma Thompson’s warmly quirky tale of a magical, potato-nosed nanny who rescues a dysfunctional British family, the summer seems to fizzle out.

Left over are things like the gimmicky “Piranha 3-D,” the slapdash “Twilight” spoof “Vampires Suck,” a Drew Barrymore romantic comedy called “Going the Distance,” a last-gasp Jennifer Aniston comedy from the dying Miramax titled “The Switch” and a hardboiled detective tale with Matt Dillon titled “Takers.”

But if Labor Day weekend marks both the end of summer and the beginning of the fall-holiday movies season, then both of them promise to go off with a bang. The Sept. 3 weekend boasts two strong finishers-starters for the transition of seasons.

Austin maverick Robert Rodriguez teams up with his favorite craggy-faced star Danny Trejo for “Machete,” a revenge yarn in which a hired assassin is double crossed and sets out to assassinate those who would assassinate him. Then George Clooney takes up arms in “The American,” another assassin’s tale with Clooney’s hired killer hiding out in an Italian village contemplating one last tricky assignment.

From that weekend on to Christmas and New Year, our popcorn boxes will again be overflowing.