Dinner for Schmucks is a pretty bad movie based on a pretty bad French movie from a few years ago. In it, Tim (Paul Rudd), is trying to get a promotion in his company. One day his boss tells him he can get the promotion if he can attend a special dinner the guys in the office have. The point of the dinner is to bring the biggest freak and loser so that person can show everyone their bizarre skills. Tim agrees to this, despite his girlfriend disapproving of it.
The next day he runs into Barry (Steve Carell) who is an amateur taxidermist who likes to stuff small mice and put them in costumes depicting historical or literary events. Once Barry gets into Tim's life, all hell breaks loose and just about everything that Tim loves or hopes to do is ruined.
The whole film should be about 85-90 minutes long, but this ultimately clocks in just under two hours. The only way this is possible is for tons of endless, unfunny scenes that go on and on for what feels like forever. Most of the film is the lead-up to the eponymous dinner, rather than the dinner itself - making the movie really "The Day Before the Dinner for Schmucks".
I normally really like Steve Carell, but he doesn't work here. He is much too annoying and overdone for me. I guess that's the point - but he was so obnoxious that it was mostly frustrating that nobody punched him in the face or left him on the side of the road in the desert. I get that it's a screwball comedy, but someone who is that annoying can't just pass as being "funny". It's just too hard to believe.
I really only laughed a few times in the whole movie. Some of the office set-up with Rudd and his co-workers is funny and some specific lines are funny (at one point, Barry says that he sleeps in the "fecal" position - that's funny). Most of the film is just stomach-turning and uncomfortable.
Somehow about 30 minutes should have been cut out of this - but you could really cut from anywhere as the story was utterly shapeless. I left the film with nothing but hatred for Barry, which seems to me to be the wrong emotion. I think I'm supposed to feel pity for it. But he seemed totally unapologetic for what he did. This was also annoying.
Stars: 1 of 4
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