The Dinner

In order to impress his girlfriend, Tim (Paul Rudd) needs to secure a promotion. So he decides to accept his bosses challenge; bring an 'idiot' to their annual 'Dinner for Winners'. A competition run by white-collar executives and disguised as a celebration of brilliance in unrecognised individuals. In reality, the meal is simply an opportunity for elitist senior-management types to laugh at some quirky and eccentric members of society. Tim's girlfriend tries to convince him the whole idea is abhorrent. Just as he is beginning to agree with her, he meets Barry (Steve Carell). An IRS worker, with a passion for creating art from taxidermied mice, Barry might just be the perfect man to help Tim win the competition.

The US version of The Office has shown us that Carell can do awkward better than most and Anchorman proved his capabilities of making stupidity funny. However, his character here is completely unlikeable and, more often than not, irritating. His bowl haircut, glasses and protruding teeth, evoke bad seventies sitcoms. A time when this look would have been a stylists shorthand for 'socially inept'. Paul Rudd, on the other hand, is given little opportunity to make us laugh, playing two-dimensional straight man, Tim. Director Jay Roach's previous franchises (Austin Powers, Meet the Parents/Fockers) may not have been the greatest comedies of the past fifteen years, but delivered as and when expected. The problems with Dinner for Schmucks lie in the pacing and the writing. With a 114 minute runtime, it is simply too long. Entire characters and subplots are superfluous. It also suffers badly from second-act-drag, believing that given enough on-screen time we will somehow empathise with our two leads.

Producer Sacha Baron Cohen (Borat, Bruno), seems to have called in a number of favours from celebrity friends and cast them in every available role. The idea, presumably, is that good performances can boost a weak script into something amusing. Of Course, this is not the case. Jemaine Clement (Flight of the Conchords) as avant-garde artiste, Kieran, makes the most of his characters nonsequiturs but only manages to raise a smirk at best. The same cannot be said for David Walliams (Little Britain), whose Swiss, aristocratic character, Mueller, is completely redundant in every way. The only worthy gag in almost two-hours is provided by Chris O' Dowd (The I.T. Crowd) as a blind swordsman. However having only a handful of lines and appearing twenty minutes before the credits roll, its far too little, far too late.

Dinner for Schmucks starts with a premise full of comedic opportunities, but spends the next hour and a half ignoring these. The original, a French film from 1998 entitled The Dinner Game, was a social satire focusing on the ridiculous measures the aristocracy will go to amuse themselves. It was full of witty dialogue and, at 80 minutes long, it worked. As often happens, Hollywood seems to have missed the point and delivered a broad and bland remake.

An Americanised remake of the French comedy Le Diner De Cons (1998), Dinner For Schmucks puts together an admirable cast of comics, including Paul Rudd, Steve Carell, Jemaine Clement (of Flight Of The Concords fame) and Zach Galifianakis. I understand that his star is growing rapidly, but his name is just too hard to type, so for the rest of this article he will be 'Fat Jesus.' Nonetheless, this film delivers laughs and emotion in satisfying doses, and something I would definitely recommend.

Paul Rudd plays Tim, who works a nothing job in Generic Financial Firm #17, until his superiors offer him the chance at a promotion. The catch? He must impress at a dinner hosted by his boss, at which all employees must bring along the most idiotic guest they can find in the hope of taking out first prize. Enter Steve Carell's Barry, IRS employee and amateur taxidermist, whose unique 'skill' with turning dead mice into works of art makes him the perfect candidate. Also circling the plot is Tim's diminishing relationship with girlfriend Julie, who no longer has feelings for the corporate drone Tim has become.

The acting is competent overall, but two performances stand out and really give this film a kick. Clement seems to take great pride in his character: a pretentious artist whose hobbies include tantric sex and living amongst goats. In fact, his character is reminiscent of Russell Brand as Aldous Snow (Forgetting Sarah Marshall and Get Him To The Greek), but Clement comes right out of left field with excellent line delivery and tone, coupled with some fantastic physical comedy.

Paul Rudd may receive top billing, but make no mistake…Steve Carell drives this film. Just about every line that comes out of Barry's mouth is gold, and a testament to the effort put into the screenplay. But it is the dimension, as opposed to just the humour, of Barry's character that makes him so engaging. He invokes real sympathy in a couple of emotional scenes that prove him to be much more than just a 'schmuck.' And his absurdist chemistry with Fat Jesus during the climactic scene is nothing short of hilarious.

As soppy as it sounds, the film drives home a nice moral about how all people, regardless of hobby or intellect, all crave the same feelings of friendship and compassion in their lives. One scene in which Barry effectively questions all that he has achieved in his life is particularly heart wrenching and although it sets the foundation for an admittedly cliché ending, it is pleasing to see a film that markets itself as a first-string comedy still putting emphasis on genuine affection and character.

When using a number system to rate films for as long as I have, one begins to develop a conscious idea about what number represents certain films. In my book, anything ranked at eight or above typically constitutes either a classic, or a film I think will be looked upon as a classic in the next twenty years. Dinner For Schmucks dosen't rank quite so high, but it puts up a great fight.

*There's nothing I love more than a bit of feedback, good or bad. So drop me a line on jnatsis@iprimus.com.au and let me know what you thought of my review.*

This film shocked me. A new premise of cinema I am not familiar with, and had a very silly, very quirky style of story telling. I have to stick my neck out on this one but I enjoyed it.

I like my comedies, from the classics to the obscure, and this feature manages to slot itself in there somewhere. It's not rip roaringly funny but it makes you smile, makes you giggles and still manages to create a personal attachment to the characters. When they feel bad, we feel bad. When they put themselves through awkward, cringe-worthy situations we cringe along with them and we all end up laughing at the other end.

Stop trying to take this film seriously, it's not trying to be a serious film. It's about a group of idiots being shown of for being idiots by a bunch of corporate idiots. It's silly, fun and worth seeing.

I found the acting was good, little ropey in places but general was to standard, the direction was well thought out, the cinematography was clever and the set design and props (especially the mice) were all manufactured so well and realistically they helped to hold the film together.

This is no Godfather II but it'd no Manos: The hands of Fate either, it's a very silly, very goofy, very fun film to watch with friends, family or on your own. Everyone knows a Schmuck and everyone can relate to this film.

"Dinner for Schmucks" has a clever title but it needed to spend more time on the main course. The audience is subjugated to almost one and a half hours of build up time before the dinner bell rings. It's not time wasted though, the story does make good use of its two hour run time. However, I felt like I was on a plane taxiing down the runway trying to get up enough speed to take off and once in flight the plane kept dipping and then pulling back up; then it finally it made an abrupt landing and the flight was over.

We are first introduced to Tim (played by Paul Rudd), an investment analyst, who is presented an opportunity to pounce on a new promotion at work. The story is set up as most business tales are told. The boss has an important client, the main character is presented with a once in a life time opportunity to prove his worth and so on and so forth. While in the process he learns something about himself.

The business men (one of whom is played by Ron Livingston from "Office Space" fame) are the typical jerks who will do anything to keep on top of the dog pile. In this particular dog pile they also like to pick on the smaller, weaker dogs. It just so happens that the big dogs are having their "dinner for winners" in a few days. Tim now has a great chance to prove to his boss he will go to any length to earn the new position. The catch is that he has to find a loser to bring to dinner. They then have a contest, unbeknown to the losers, to see who the biggest schmuck is.

Tim finds his loser immediately the next day not by chance but because as Tim so wisely says "everything happens for a reason". Welcome aboard, Barry (played by Steve Carell), here the story starts picking up a little steam. Barry has a unique talent of finding the positive in almost any situation, he mispronounces words that any 5th grader knows, works for the IRS and in his spare time works on his "Mouseterpieces". A perfect fit for Tim. A "Mouseterpiece" is Barry's taxidermy side projects where he takes dead mice and mounts them in familiar historical and everyday scenarios (i.e. The Last Supper, mice having a picnic, Whistler's Mother, etc).

A lot of activity happens in that single night before the big dinner; Tim and Barry break into one of Tim's girlfriend's biggest clients' homes and finds him in a weird sexual perversion act. Next Barry accidentally invites Tim's ex-fling, Darla, over to the apartment and the first laugh riot is finally given to the audiences through a funny fight scene between Barry and Darla. Then it is on to the IRS to talk to Barry's boss, Therman (played by Zach Galifianakis), who is also a self proclaimed mind reader. Have you noticed they still haven't made it to the dinner yet? The next day Tim has a brunch appointment with a potential multi million dollar client where Barry and Darla show up trying to smooth things over. Again the straight man, Tim, and goofy man, Barry, routine starts up and we are given another good laugh. It was a pretty easy set up; take a high pressure situation and place it in any restaurant that has a Maitre d' next mix in a socially inept character such as Barry and something funny is bound to happen.

After all of this we are finally taken out to dinner. The peculiar thing was that the dinner only lasts 15 minutes. This was a shame because the story could have spent more time on the losers that came to dinner. There was some great talent there, one being Jeff Dunham, a humorous ventriloquist who has been working stand up clubs for the last two decades. It felt like the director (Jay Roach) should have pumped the brakes, slowed up and gave these losers some more screen time. We did get another laugh riot when Therman and Barry had an invisible shoot out between their mind reading capabilities. Then it was over with a nice epilogue to the story through Barry's "Mouseterpieces".

Should you see this movie? Ummm…OK, why not? There were some funny bits to it, the storyline was solid and the comedic actors were funny but didn't have to try too hard for the jokes. Rudd plays a good straight man in these situations where Carell and Galifianakis can play off of him quite easily.

Not only is it hilarious, it has a great message. To be able to tell a meaningful story about friendship, acceptance and triumph over adversity surrounded by physical comedy and ridiculous characters isn't easy to do. This one nails it!