Dinner For Schmucks is a remake of a 1998 French film entitled, Le Dinner de Cons (The Dinner Game), from writer/director Francis Veber who also penned the script for La Cage aux Folles. The latter picture was also remade with Robin Williams and Gene Hackman as The Birdcage.
Jay Roach, who also directed the Austin Powers and Meet the Parents films, brings decidedly American sensibilities to this comedy of class wars.
Tim Conrad (Paul Rudd) is a mid-level executive at investment firm Fender Financial. He wows his boss Lance Fender (Bruce Greenwood) by facilitating a multi-million dollar deal with wealthy Swiss business Martin Mueller (David Walliams). Tim is in line for a promotion, but only after he attends a dinner party with the company heads in which they invite idiots to make fun of them. Tim is appalled at first until he literally runs into life-long goofus, Barry Speck (Steve Carell). A desk drone at the IRS, Barry collects dead mice to use in intricate dioramas, recreating classic works of art like “The Last Supper” and Edvard Munch’s “The Scream.”
Barry arrives at Tim’s apartment a day early and in a matter of hours has turned his life upside-down. Barry single-handedly manages to injure Tim’s back, wreck the place, sabotage his relationship with girlfriend Julie (Stephanie Szostak), and invites in Tim’s mentally unstable ex Darla (Lucy Punch).
This is the third pairing for Rudd and Carell following Anchorman and The 40-Year Old Virgin. Rudd’s deadpan delivery plays well against Carell’s manic and obliviously moronic Barry who is like Michael Scott with the volume turned up to eleven. However, the character feels labored with the movie trying way too hard to wring comedy out of something so thin. Rudd is still likeable enough that you don’t feel he truly deserves to be in the eye of Hurricane Barry. The movie only truly picks up when we finally get to the dinner where we meet idiots like a blind fencing champion, a man with epic facial hair, and a ventriloquist married to his dummy, all of whom lead a revolt against their bourgeois tormentors.
Dinner For Schmucks winds up being an uneven comedy when it should have been a riotous farce. The film manages to be saved by two incredibly funny performances from Zach Galifianakis as a self-professed psychic and Flight of the Conchords’ Jemaine Clement as a pretentious artist fond of dressing up as a satyr.
Rating: **
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