Movie Review: Dinner for Schmucks

LITTLE ROCK — There’s a lot that happens in the inelegantly titled Dinner for Schmucks before dinner is ever served. So much happens, in fact, that one begins to wonder if there will even be a dinner.

Lucky for us, most of it is pretty entertaining.

Paul Rudd plays Tim, an up and coming business analyst in line for a nice promotion. All he has to do is show up at a monthly dinner thrown by his boss. He must bring a guest, and that guest must be someone the boss and other executives can laugh at and ridicule.

“It’s messed up,” one character notes, though not with any sign of remorse.

Paul’s girlfriend, Julie, an art gallery curator, is opposed to the dinners and implores Tim not to participate. Tim agrees. Mostly.

And then he meets IRS employee Barry (Steve Carell) and, well, he finds his schmuck and loses his sense of decency.

Actually, Tim runs Barry over while Barry is trying to fetch a dead mouse from the middle of the street to use in his collection of “mousterpieces,” taxidermy scenes he creates from dead mice.

So Tim invites Barry to the dinner, but Barry arrives a day early and havoc ensues. Before long, Timhas thrown out his back, lost Julie, had his apartment and Porsche trashed by a stalker ex-girlfriend and become the subject of an IRS audit.

All of this, of course, is Barry’s fault.

Oh, and there is the matter of dinner with the other misfits, including a woman who communicates with dead animals; a blind fencer; a guy with a pet buzzard among others. Is it any shock that eventually fire is involved and the bird is on the loose?

Barry is another in a line of Carell’s clueless yet somehow likable characters. Ten years ago this role probably would have landed in Jim Carrey’s lap and been crushed under his loudness. And it’s not hard to envision Will Ferrell improvising the character to death.

But Carell knows how to pull things back a bit and not rely purely on volume and shtick. Yes, Barry is infuriating, the epitome of the unwelcome guest who just won’t leave. Still, Carell and director Jay Roach are smart enough to inject a little warmth into this hapless doofus.

And perhaps some credit should also go to the screenwriters.

Dinner for Schmucks, which was written by David Guionand Michael Handelman (both have family in Little Rock), was adapted from a 1998 French film called The Dinner Game. I haven’t seen the original, but this is a solid effort.

Having a solid supporting cast also doesn’t hurt. Some of the biggest laughs are from secondary characters.

Jemain Clement (half of comedy duo Flight of the Conchords) is a riot as Kieran Vollard, an artist whose favorite subject is himself (usually made up as half animal), and whom Tim suspects is sleeping with Julie.

Zach Galifianakis is good as Barry’s bizarre boss at the IRS and, we soon discover, a rival at the dinner.

Rudd does fine in his role as straight man and reunites with Carell, his 40-Year-Old Virgin and Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy costar.

Of course, it could be funnier. You’d think that with Carell, Galifianakis and Clement you’d be rolling hysterically in the sticky theater aisles. That’s not really the case. Yeah, you’ll find yourself laughing, just not as much as you hoped.

And this thing is long. There’s just not quite enough story to fill out the nearly twohour length.

So, Dinner for Schmucks isn’t perfect. But it won’t leave you hungry.