Dinner for Schmucks
Genre: Comedy
Director: Jay Roach
Stars: Paul Rudd, Steve Carell
*
One of the many, many problems with Dinner for Schmucks is that it takes its sweet time before mentioning the dinner of the title — and then is even more leisurely in getting its stars (Paul Rudd and Steve Carell) to the table — that the whole occasion begins to feel like an afterthought.
Rudd’s Tim hopes to please his boss (Bruce Greenwood) by attending a monthly dinner where each guest has to bring the biggest idiot they can find so that everyone can laugh at their expense. Despite Tim’s mutterings of moral objection, when he meets Barry (Carell), he thinks he might have a winning loser.
Jay Roach’s comedy falls flat in part because the humour is so aggressive from the get-go, with a tinge of meanness bubbling beneath the surface that makes it seem as if we’re supposed to laugh along with the dinner guests at Carell’s socially inept IRS worker with a penchant for taxidermy.
The film spends so much time establishing that Barry means well, even if he’s a moron, and Tim’s really a nice guy, even if he is going along with the dinner, that the audience ends up resenting them both. Supporting actors, including Larry Wilmore of The Daily Show and Ron Livingston, are given barely anything to do, and Zach Galifianakis, as Barry’s rival, was apparently asked to just show up and be Zach Galifianakis, with the producers under the impression that would be enough to get the audience laughing. It’s not.
The one saving grace of the film is Flight of the Conchords vet Jemaine Clement, succeeding where Galifianakis fails.
