The Toy

The Toy (Le Jouet, 1976) is a French comedy by Francis Veber you can watch online on iFILM. Pierre Richard plays François Perrin, a broke journalist who gets spotted in a department store by the son of the man who owns his newspaper — and chosen as the boy's new plaything.

Young Rambal-Cochet has never heard the word no from anyone. His father, played by Michel Bouquet, runs a media empire and has used money to keep a safe distance from parenting. François needs the job. So he agrees to the arrangement and moves into the mansion, bracing for the worst. What follows is not quite what either of them expected: the boy has never had an adult treat him like a person rather than a problem, and François quietly starts doing exactly that.

Veber remade the film in the United States in 1982 with Richard Pryor in the lead, but the original is sharper — the satire of inherited wealth and absent fatherhood lands with more economy, and Richard's physical comedy finds the right balance between humiliation and warmth. Stream The Toy (1976) on iFILM.