Recipe for a disastrous dinner
WHEN you take into consideration the supporting cast of comic heavyweights in Dinner for Schmucks, it turns out to be one of the most disappointing comedies in recent memory.
FILM REVIEW: DINNER FOR SCHMUCKS
Rating: *
ONE can only assume that Steve Carell, Paul Rudd and Zach Galifianakis were attached to Dinner for Schmucks before the screenplay was written.
Perhaps they had seen the French film Le Dîner de Cons, on which Dinner for Schmucks is based, and enjoyed it?
Maybe they were fulfilling a contractual obligation to Dreamworks, or maybe the whole thing’s an elaborate punking. Either way, there are going to be plenty of awkward moments at media interviews as the actors try to peddle this piffle with a straight face.
When you take into consideration, a supporting cast of comic heavyweights including Jermaine Clement (Flight of the Conchords), David Walliams (Little Britain), Ron Livingston (Office Space), Larry Wilmore (the US version of The Office) and Kristen Schaal (Flight of the Conchords), pound-for-pound this is one of the most disappointing comedies in recent memory.
It’s hard to understand how a movie comprising seven or eight of the funniest people on the planet can be so utterly joyless.
Rudd plays Tim, a middle management type with dreams of getting the key to the executive washroom. After dazzling his boss (Bruce Greenwood) at a meeting, he is on the precipice of getting the promotion he has always wanted and is invited to a dinner at which the company’s top brass will be in attendance.
But this is a dinner with a difference. Each diner has to bring an idiot and there is a prize for the biggest fool on the night.
Tim doesn’t like the idea, but when he hits Barry with his Porsche he feels the universe is conspiring against him. Barry is a prize idiot, who makes dioramas with dead mice by dressing them up in tiny costumes.
Tim invites Barry to the dinner but he turns up on the wrong night, setting in motion a series of screwball events and set pieces that are at the same time desperately unfunny and mean-spirited.
Tim’s live-in girlfriend Julie (Stephanie Szostak), an art gallery curator, hates the idea of the dinner and is driven into the arms of sleezeball artist Kieran (Clement).
To win her back, Tim and Barry enlist the services of Barry’s boss at the Internal Revenue Service, Therman (Galifianakis).
Everyone does their best here, but they are railing against a screenplay by David Guion and Michael Handelman (of the atrocious The Ex), which is awful structurally, narratively and conceptually.
Rudd, who plays the Dean Martin to Carrel’s Jerry Lewis, looks genuinely bored and the immense talent on offer in this film is under-utilised.
Jay Roach has shown comedy savvy in the past with the Austin Powers movies, but he is powerless against this wretched script.
Dinner for Schmucks is screening nationally.
Reviewed by Adam Kamien
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