Dinner for Schmucks is one good scene in search of an entire movie. Paul Rudd stars as Tim - an analyst at a private equity firm looking to move up the ladder after one of his co-workers is fired. After a great deal of hard work and brilliant strategy, he has found a potential new client that could mean big bucks, so the boss, Lance Fender (Bruce Greenwood), invites Tim to a special dinner where each invitee brings a different eccentric personality they can all mock.
The more outrageous the guest Tim brings, the better his chances for a promotion, so he ends up bringing a guy he almost runs over with his car, Barry (Steve Carell) - a lonely IRS agent who enjoys making artistic scenes with stuffed and decorated dead mice.
When Barry gets involved in his life, will Tim regret it?
Will Tim become heartless enough to go through with the sadistic dinner?
Dinner for Schmucks largely is pointless with a few good performances tossed in as if by accident. A great deal of the comedy comes from creating strange people and asking the audience to laugh at them, which isn't enough for the most part.
Director Jay Roach, along with writers David Guion and Michael Handelman (based on the French film Le Diner de Cons), are killing time until the big dinner scene. Throughout Dinner for Schmucks, the team tries to establish a relationship between Barry and Tim as the well intentioned IRS Agent attempts to help Tim and, of course, makes a mess of everything.
It's supposed to be an ever escalating series of misunderstandings and goof ups to make Three's Company jealous, but it derives the majority of laughs from Jemaine Clement, as the virile, hairy artist with animal magnetism and insatiable libido, as well as Lucy Punch as the one time lover of Tim who has been stalking him. The two of them make much more out of the characters than you might imagine, and entertain more than Carell and Rudd.
Shockingly, I loved the dinner scene more than I thought. The idea of mocking people who are different just because they are different isn't great comedy, but Roach, Guion and Handelman give these oddball characters some heart, outrageousness that makes them cartoonish in a good way, and, more importantly, point out how ridiculous and classless the mockers are in their pursuit of cheap laughs.
Dinner For Schmucks, which doesn't use the phrase anywhere in the movie from what I remember, flipped everything around. They should have started with the dinner, and shown us the ramifications or future dinners.
1 ½ Waffles (Out of 4)
Dinner for Schmucks is rated PG-13 for sequences of crude and sexual content, some partial nudity and language.
Will Tim become heartless enough to go through with the sadistic dinner?
Dinner for Schmucks largely is pointless with a few good performances tossed in as if by accident. A great deal of the comedy comes from creating strange people and asking the audience to laugh at them, which isn't enough for the most part.
Director Jay Roach, along with writers David Guion and Michael Handelman (based on the French film Le Diner de Cons), are killing time until the big dinner scene. Throughout Dinner for Schmucks, the team tries to establish a relationship between Barry and Tim as the well intentioned IRS Agent attempts to help Tim and, of course, makes a mess of everything.
It's supposed to be an ever escalating series of misunderstandings and goof ups to make Three's Company jealous, but it derives the majority of laughs from Jemaine Clement, as the virile, hairy artist with animal magnetism and insatiable libido, as well as Lucy Punch as the one time lover of Tim who has been stalking him. The two of them make much more out of the characters than you might imagine, and entertain more than Carell and Rudd.
Shockingly, I loved the dinner scene more than I thought. The idea of mocking people who are different just because they are different isn't great comedy, but Roach, Guion and Handelman give these oddball characters some heart, outrageousness that makes them cartoonish in a good way, and, more importantly, point out how ridiculous and classless the mockers are in their pursuit of cheap laughs.
Dinner For Schmucks, which doesn't use the phrase anywhere in the movie from what I remember, flipped everything around. They should have started with the dinner, and shown us the ramifications or future dinners.
1 ½ Waffles (Out of 4)
Dinner for Schmucks is rated PG-13 for sequences of crude and sexual content, some partial nudity and language.
