My Dinner with Andre · reception & legacy
1981 · Louis Malle
How My Dinner with Andre has been received, argued over, and remembered.
The arc
It opened quietly and might have vanished, but Siskel & Ebert championed it on their show — Ebert named it the best film of 1981 — and it became an improbable arthouse hit with a marathon theatrical run, eventually landing in the Criterion Collection.
What's debated
The eternal fight: is two hours of two men talking over dinner hypnotic cinema or the most boring premise ever filmed — and once you're in, whose side are you on, Wally's or Andre's?
Its footprint
It's shorthand for 'the movie where nothing happens but talking' — The Simpsons turned it into a gag arcade game, and Community's 'Critical Film Studies' episode built an entire homage around it.
Where it stands
A Criterion-era arthouse touchstone and a rite of passage: the 'just two guys talking' film every cinephile eventually has to sit down with.