When you have a director like Jay Roach (Austin Powers, Meet the Parents) and actors like Steve Carell, Paul Rudd, & Zach Galififanakis all on one project, you would think the final product would be a laugh riot, wouldn’t you? It’s too bad that Dinner for Schmucks is only mildly funny.
Tim (Paul Rudd) is an executive at a financial firm who is trying to climb up in the ranks at work so that he can afford to give his girlfriend Julie (Stephanie Szostak) the kind of life that he thinks she deserves. Tim makes his move by presenting a great investment to his boss (Bruce Greenwood) at an office meeting. This move does impress the boss and he is then invited to a dinner that they hold every year in which east person must bring the biggest idiot they can find.
Tim has a run in (literally) with an IRS employee/mouse artist named Barry (Steve Carrell). From the first conversation they have, Tim knows right away that he has found his dinner date. Barry is a very sweet but also complete idiot. From the moment Barry enters Tim’s life, he makes a complete wreck of it.
My problem with the film is not the actors. Rudd is playing the same nice guy that you have seen him play before and that’s fine. Carell is having some fun playing the clueless idiot. My problem is the material that these actors are given.
Dinner for Schmucks is a remake of a French film called Le Diner de Cons which I have never actually seen, but to my understanding, most of the original film took place at the actual dinner. In the new version, the dinner is only the last 10-15 minutes of a 2 hour movie. I felt that the movie was running on fumes until the dinner scene (which is the best part of the film) There are quite a few laughs to be had in the movie, but they felt so few and far between.
By: Marc Ferman
