Dinner For Schmucks (Paramount Pictures)
Loss of Appetite
Steve Carell and Paul Rudd are two of the most likeable actors in Hollywood but you couldnt prove it from their latest film Dinner For Schmucks. This film takes the talent of these two lead actors and wastes it on a boring, drawn out, mean spirited and worst of all unfunny plot. The movie may be about a meal with odd characters but you will lose your appetite shortly after starting to watch.
Rudd plays Tim Conrad, an up and coming financial planner. He has his eye on a vacancy on his boss more immediate staff and makes a play for that position. His boss (Bruce Greenwood) is impressed, so much so that he invites Tim to his house on Saturday night for dinner. He adds that this is a competition as well as a dinner in that each invited employee brings an oddball as his guest. The oddest guest wins, and earns points for the sponsor employee.
Tim is stunned at something this crass and puts it out of his mind until he runs into (literally) a taxidermist of sorts named Barry Speck (Carell). Barry makes mouseterpieces in that he stuffs dead mice and arranges them in artistic ways. His works are imagined to be the comic highlights of the movie they arent. Anyway Tim sees Barry as his chance to impress the boss.
When he tells his girlfriend Julie (Stephanie Szostack) about his plan, she is horrified. Tim immediately backs down. Then Barry shows up at his apartment a day early ready to go to dinner. Tim cant get rid of him and complications ensure. Everything leads up to the infamous dinner for schmucks.
Maybe the movie would have worked if Carells Barry had been more appealing. The story tries to make him a little pitiful and a little loveable but it doesnt work. Barry is just annoying with a capital A. It could have been played in a winning way. Jerry Lewis has made a career of playing characters such as Barry who annoy but also reaches our hearts. In fact Dinner For Schmucks is a movie Martin and Lewis could have made successfully in their prime.
The supporting cast is also annoying. Jermaine Clement plays Keiran, an artist of sorts, who works with Julie. Tim becomes jealous of him and tries to catch him and Julie in a tryst. Keiran is like a cousin to Russell Brands Aldous Snow character in Get Him To the Greek. Brand was unappealing in that role and Clement is even more so in his.
The dinner, which is the big pay-off for the movie, is a big nothing. Barry and his co-worker Therman (Zack Galifianakis) have a duel of wits that slows the movie to a crawl. The other guests arent strange enough or even remotely interesting. So after suffering through the interminable first half of the film you reach what should be a comic dessert and find it to be tasteless and stupid.
The film is rated PG-13 for profanity and adult situations.
The presence of Carell and Rudd had audiences hoping for a splendid feast of comedy, but what they got were tasteless offerings that killed appetites and sent the audiences home longing for something different. Mark Dinner For Schmucks down as one of the big disappointments of 2010.
I scored Dinner For Schmucks a tasteless 3 out of 10.
