Stream It Or Skip It: ‘The Valet’ on Hulu, an Unexpectedly Delightful Comedy Featuring an Inspired Eugenio Derbez/Samara Weaving Combo

Hulu exclusive The Valet remakes a 2006 French farce in which a famous actress stages a phony relationship with a valet as cover for her relationship with a married man. A silly premise maybe, but the film ends up being a vehicle for Mexican funnyguy Eugenio Derbez and Nine Perfect Strangers and The Babysitter star Samara Weaving, who share terrific chemistry in this very silly, but unexpectedly charming little movie.

THE VALET: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

The Gist: Antonio (Derbez) is a mega-doofus. His flat-top haircut is straight off a football card from 1964. His mustache inspires people to say things like, “Uh – that mustache” when he’s out of earshot. He often has a wide-eyed expression on his face that tells us he’s in a state of befuddled paralysis. He rides his bike to school to pick up his teenage son, who hops on the back and somehow doesn’t seem to be mortified by it. He lives with his elderly mother (Carmen Salinas), who’s way too open with him about her sexual escapades with their landlord, Mr. Kim (Ji Yong Lee). He carries a hopeless torch for his estranged wife, Isabel (Marisol Nichols), who breaks it to him that she’s dating someone else. I hereby note that Antonio’s job parking cars at a hotel is not in the least indicative of his doofusness, because working-class people deserve respect, and the movie makes a point of showing how snooty rich folk treat their valets like inferiors when they hand over the keys to their Ferraris and Mercedes. Antonio works hard and is a good man although sometimes, god help him, he acts a little too much like Mr. Bean.

Elsewhere in Los Angeles, a shitbird named Vincent (Max Greenfield) enjoys a clandestine hotel-room tryst with Olivia Allan (Weaving). He’s a failson-in-law who married into a billionaire family and works as a developer who’s going to gentrify the living crap out of Antonio’s neighborhood. She’s a highfalutin movie star on the cusp of releasing an Amelia Earhart biopic, and she’s waiting for Vincent to divorce his wife, Kathryn (Betsy Brandt), so they can stop sneaking around. They argue and it spills out into the street when fate (read: the screenwriter) puts Antonio in the middle of a juicy Vincent-Olivia paparazzi photo, which TMZ exploits for a zillion page views. Vincent fears losing his stake in the billionaire fortune, so he goes into damage control mode to hide his extramarital activity and curtail a scandal that would totally derail Olivia’s Earhart movie: He hires Antonio to pretend to be Olivia’s lover. Antonio agrees, but instead of asking for, I dunno, $150k, which he could totally get, he wants $12,850, which would pay off his ex-wife’s college tuition debt. Like a said – doofus. But a sweet doofus.

As you might predict, the scenario finds Antonio Mr. Beaning his way down red carpets, chowing down on free limo food, sweating profusely as Olivia kisses him in public, and being mistaken for the waitstaff at fancy parties. Olivia comes off a bit standoffish, but soon warms up to Antonio; she’s lonely and isolated and finds the warmth of Antonio’s omnipresent extended family endearing. Meanwhile, Kathryn knows she’s married to a weasel she can’t trust, and hires a slob private detective to follow the slob private detective Vincent hired to follow Olivia. Are Antonio and Olivia really going to fall in love and bridge the slob-snob divide? NO FRICKIN’ WAY.

What Movies Will It Remind You Of?: Strong Notting Hill vibes here, and that’s a comparison I do not make lightly.

Performance Worth Watching: Derbez and Weaving are equally inspired here, whether they’re together on screen or apart. He finds the sincere, lovable soul beneath his character’s goofy facade. And she transitions from a satirical riff on Hollywood-star stereotypes to a grounded, thoughtful individual who just needs a friend and confidant. They offer way more than we’d expect from a silly high-concept comedy like this.

Memorable Dialogue: Olivia tells Antonio the truth he really needs to hear:

Olivia: How committed are you to the mustache?

Antonio: You don’t like it?

Olivia: No. No one does.

Sex and Skin: Olivia and Antonio stage a fake sex scene because they know they’re being watched by private detectives.

Our Take: The Valet is a legit charmer. It’s light, funny and heartwarming, and the cast transcends the formulaic components of its screenplay. Can we see some of these jokes, and the conclusion to the gentrification subplot, coming from a mile away? Sure. But the film uses its nearly two-hour runtime to find fresh, comedic, heartfelt material for these characters: The two detectives are rivals who become tender pals. Kathryn is not content to be the shitbird’s steamrolled wife. The interactions between Antonio’s mother and Mr. Kim are unexpectedly sweet (she speaks Spanish and he speaks Korean and neither speaks English, which makes for amusingly convoluted translations of their communications). And Weaving and Derbez find nuance in their interactions that sidestep the wackiness of the conceit and explore far more realistic angles on their relationship.

At first glance, the film is an eyeroller that mooshes together elements of buddy comedies, romantic comedies, wacky-ethnic-family comedies, class-divide comedies and spoofy movie-biz comedies. But that moosh features more jokes that land than whiff. Derbez’s subtle physical comedy wins us over, the old lady’s TMI sex talk comes from an honest place instead of a raunchy one, and Weaving shows us a character who performs while at work but is so very tired of performing during everyday life. The Valet subverts our expectations without sacrificing its broad appeal, and overcomes its genre limitations to be a little bit more than the sum of its parts. It’s a winner.

Our Call: STREAM IT. The Valet is the rare feelgood movie that makes us feel good without bearing a heavy hand.

John Serba is a freelance writer and film critic based in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Read more of his work at johnserbaatlarge.com.