If Dinner for Schmucks speaks to anything, it's how much a strong cast can prop up even the most middling material. Director Jay Roach has assembled a phenomenal group of comedic talent for his “inspired by” remake of Francis Veber's French-language comedy The Dinner Game—unfortunately, he didn't assemble a screenplay to match. But when you have Steve Carell and Paul Rudd as your leads, sometimes that's all you need to pull some memorable comedic moments out of a script that doesn't have a great deal of them.
The titular dinner at the center of this film is a sort of corporate scumbag comedy show, where executives at a powerful investment firm once a month gather at the home of their charmingly slimy boss ( Bruce Greenwood) while bringing along a local idiot of their choosing to entertain the corporate elite with their unique brand of buffoonery. Rudd plays Tim, an underling at the company on the come-up who finds himself invited to this mean-spirited dinner party. Impressing the bosses could lead to a big promotion, but Tim's girlfriend (a near-saintly Stephanie Szostak) thinks it's a vile, disgusting idea (which it is, of course). Moral dilemma achieved.
It's only really a dilemma during the five or so minutes it takes before Tim literally runs into Steve Carell's Barry with a Porsche. Barry is like a demigod among awkward fools. Apart from being just a walking, talking, bespectacled ball of uncomfortable to be around, Barry also has a talent for taxidermy, making lovingly crafted dioramas using dead mice he happens to find lying around. As an aside, these dioramas are worth some kind of production design nod at the Oscars next year, if you ask me. I'd have almost rather watched an entire movie told through these dead mouse tableaus.
Tim, seeing providence in this encounter, decides to befriend this poor dolt and bring him to dinner. What follows is a torrential downpour of Jay Roach-brand over-the-top uncomfortable. Carell careens through Tim's life like a drunken elephant, laying waste to his apartment, his car, and even his relationship, through many a “hilarious misunderstanding.” Regrettably, shockingly few of these misunderstandings result in actual laughs. Roach seems content to rely on wild gesticulations, overwrought side characters and occasional off-kilter misunderstandings of pop culture to carry this thing through, with only a smattering of legitimately clever jokes to prop up all those histrionics. There's also something a little suffocating about the timing and the pacing of it all. Apart from the movie being at least 15 minutes too long, many of the gags seem to come at a labored pace, forced into nooks and crannies of dialogue that just don't sound funny when read as they are.
But again, the cast does more than its share in attempting to turn this material into something watchable, and periodically pretty funny. Carell is something otherworldly here as Barry. He somehow manages to rein in any temptation to fly off into hysterics the way others in the film often do, and maintains a sort of quiet, innocent sadness that makes his enfeebled attempts at interacting with humanity far more sympathetic than they probably have any right to be. Rudd is as effortlessly charming as he tends to be in most movies, even though Tim's character is underwritten to the point of being little more than the kindling Barry's blazing inferno of stupidity needs to get from scene to scene.
The supporting cast is equally overqualified for what they're working with. Zach Galifianakis turns in a memorably insidious performance as Barry's IRS rival, whose obsession with mind control leads to some truly bizarre scenes between the two. Chris O'Dowd of the UK sitcom The IT Crowd has a good, random appearance as an enraged blind swordsman. The standout, however, is Jemaine Clement as Kieran, a predictably out-of-his-mind photo artist that Tim's girlfriend manages. In the hands of pretty much anyone else, Kieran would have been pure, nonstop gimmick, but Clement's laid-back approach and uncanny ability to sexualize goat leggings allow him to wring something damned close to special out of the character.
That's as good a summary for the whole movie as any, I suppose. Dinner for Schmucks always seems like it's hovering somewhere near a level of greatness, always a step away from hitting just the right comic note, or putting forth something truly, uniquely bizarre to stick with you once you've left the theater, but then it just never quite gets there. The only reason I remember as much as I do, and laughed as often as I did, is because of the quality work put forth by a cast that really, truly deserved a better script than the one they were handed. Fans of Carell, Rudd and the rest of this motley crew will find things to like about Dinner for Schmucks, but they'll also be disappointed that these comedians aren't given a greater opportunity to shine.
The titular dinner at the center of this film is a sort of corporate scumbag comedy show, where executives at a powerful investment firm once a month gather at the home of their charmingly slimy boss ( Bruce Greenwood) while bringing along a local idiot of their choosing to entertain the corporate elite with their unique brand of buffoonery. Rudd plays Tim, an underling at the company on the come-up who finds himself invited to this mean-spirited dinner party. Impressing the bosses could lead to a big promotion, but Tim's girlfriend (a near-saintly Stephanie Szostak) thinks it's a vile, disgusting idea (which it is, of course). Moral dilemma achieved.
It's only really a dilemma during the five or so minutes it takes before Tim literally runs into Steve Carell's Barry with a Porsche. Barry is like a demigod among awkward fools. Apart from being just a walking, talking, bespectacled ball of uncomfortable to be around, Barry also has a talent for taxidermy, making lovingly crafted dioramas using dead mice he happens to find lying around. As an aside, these dioramas are worth some kind of production design nod at the Oscars next year, if you ask me. I'd have almost rather watched an entire movie told through these dead mouse tableaus.
But again, the cast does more than its share in attempting to turn this material into something watchable, and periodically pretty funny. Carell is something otherworldly here as Barry. He somehow manages to rein in any temptation to fly off into hysterics the way others in the film often do, and maintains a sort of quiet, innocent sadness that makes his enfeebled attempts at interacting with humanity far more sympathetic than they probably have any right to be. Rudd is as effortlessly charming as he tends to be in most movies, even though Tim's character is underwritten to the point of being little more than the kindling Barry's blazing inferno of stupidity needs to get from scene to scene.
That's as good a summary for the whole movie as any, I suppose. Dinner for Schmucks always seems like it's hovering somewhere near a level of greatness, always a step away from hitting just the right comic note, or putting forth something truly, uniquely bizarre to stick with you once you've left the theater, but then it just never quite gets there. The only reason I remember as much as I do, and laughed as often as I did, is because of the quality work put forth by a cast that really, truly deserved a better script than the one they were handed. Fans of Carell, Rudd and the rest of this motley crew will find things to like about Dinner for Schmucks, but they'll also be disappointed that these comedians aren't given a greater opportunity to shine.
