Movie Review: In 'Dinner for Schmucks,' the main course is mockery
Steve Carell, Paul Rudd reunite in a comedy that, though not their best, has lots of laughs.
3 out of 4 stars
Once the plot gets in motion, you can easily predict how "Dinner for Schmucks" is going to end up. But the path it takes to get there? That's where the laughs come in, with tossed off non sequiturs, escalating misunderstandings and some fine work by a crop of quirky comedians.
"Schmucks" gets a lot of guffaws, laughs that pile up higher as it goes along.
It's a loose remake of a French comedy known as "The Dinner Game" in America, in which privileged businessmen amuse themselves by each bringing a bizarre guest to dinner, competing to see whose guest is the biggest object of mockery.
"Schmucks" is a lot softer than the French film, whose jerky protagonist is turned into nice-guy Paul Rudd here. He's Tim, a lower-level business analyst hoping to impress his boss, so he takes the dinner invitation even though he thinks the idea is "messed up."
But then he runs into Barry Speck (Steve Carell), who's trying to rescue a dead mouse from the middle of the road. Barry, who sports bangs, a clip-on tie and a windbreaker, creates beautiful dioramas of stuffed mice in costume, and uses mice to re-create great art - "mousterpieces" - such as the Mousa Lisa.
He's a meek loser who plays dead at any sign of danger. He has little idea of how the world works (on meeting a Swiss megamillionaire, he wonders: "Does the cheese come out of the cow with the holes?").
Clearly Barry will be perfect for the dinner, thinks Tim, who offers an invite. But before they sit down to lobster, Barry is going to wreck just about every aspect of Tim's life. But you knew that already.
Rudd and Carell have teamed up before, and "Schmucks," as funny as it is, isn't as good as their previous movies. It doesn't have the depth of character or the heart that "The 40 Year Old Virgin" had, and it's not as pleasingly absurd as "Anchorman."
But the stars have good chemistry, Rudd as the straight man, Carell as the wrecking-machine doofus.
Director Jay Roach ("Meet the Parents," "Austin Powers") is in loose form here, letting the movie meander some as he's happy to let his stars do their thing - the co-stars, too.
It has room for a dozen or so comedians to cut loose, many of them at the final dinner party. Before that, though it gets best use out of a killer trio who throw everything they've got into this broad comedy:
There's Jemaine Clement of "Flight of the Conchords" as an oversexed, egocentric artiste who wears a goat outfit. There's British actress Lucy Punch as Tim's vengeful stalker ex-girlfriend.
And best of all is bearded Zach Galifianakis of "The Hangover" as a mind-control expert with a cape and a turtleneck dickey. Once again he steals every scene he's in, a particularly nutty part of the chaos all around him.
1 hour, 50 minutes. PG-13. Some profanity, a good bit of sexual content, and what the MPAA calls "some partial nudity."