DINNER FOR SCHMUCKS

“DINNER FOR SCHMUCKS” (Paul Rudd & Steve Carell)

I can see where you’d have to be in the mood for silliness to enjoy this, & I guess I was because I liked it. I actually thought Carell gives his best performance to date because he neither looked nor acted like Steve Carell. & Paul Rudd just continues to be impossible not to like – he’s the male version of Jennifer Aniston, no, he’s not a tremendously talented actor, but he has a pleasant presence that wins you over no matter how corny the material he’s performing.
Here, Rudd plays Tim, a schmuck in his own right at work, where he & his fellow co-workers drool over the prospect of getting a promotion ‘upstairs’ when one of the upper echelon employees is ‘let go’.
Tim puts on a presentation during a routine meeting & moves himself into the driver’s seat to nab the promotion – that’s when he learns about the ‘Dinner for Winners’ his boss hosts. Tim is told to bring a dinner companion – the quirkiest loser he can find – the stranger the better since winning the competition will ensure him of getting the promotion. As luck would have it, Tim runs down Barry (Carell) when the latter runs out in front of his car. Tim is extremely apologetic until he discovers Barry’s reason for darting into the street – to save an already dead mouse.
Although Tim thinks he’s hit the jackpot with Barry, he soon regrets the encounter as Barry turns into a human barnacle that Tim just can’t seem to pry off.
In all of his efforts to pay Tim back, Barry just makes Tim’s life worse.
Subplots involving Tim’s girlfriend & a one-night affair turned stalker don’t add a lot to the comedy, but they do end up being necessary. In other words, the laughs go away for a while as the comedy loses its momentum but it returns with an extremely childish finale that worked for me (this time) I would also venture to say this is the type of movie that if I were to view it again, I might not have anything nice to say about it – but for a one-time viewing it kept me entertained.
A bit of silly dialogue that made me laugh was when Barry tells Tim, “I lost my wife’s clitoris... I thought I found it under the couch, but it turned out to be a piece of gum.”
Zack Gallifinakis as Barry’s co-worker/superior Therman is a hit & miss character – sometimes his goofiness makes you smirk & then you get to the point where you just want him to go away.
But the strength here is Carell’s performance – at first you feel sorry for him, then you get to the point where you think, ‘Man, Is he annoying!’ & then in the end, when the reason is given as to why his life seems meaningless, you’re back to feeling sorry for him. And along the way he & Rudd give you a few chuckles – there’s nothing wrong with that. So I’d say when the DVD comes out & you’re in the mood for something silly, definitely give ‘Dinner For Schmucks’ a shot – It isn’t as bad as some are saying it is.
A nameless critic (dbm) labeled this the weakest comedy of the year, but all you have to do to find a weaker one is to watch Carell’s earlier 2010 film, “Date Night”. & to me, the weakest comedy of 2010 is clearly “Cyrus”. Of course, I wouldn’t argue with anyone who would say that Cyrus wasn’t a comedy because in order to qualify there has to be at least one funny line.