Dinner for Schmucks

It seems that mainstream, American studio comedies at the moment are in serious danger of overdosing on great things: improvisation, heterosexual male love and Zack Galifianakis. I realize we’re smack dab in the middle of the let’s-all-just-try-and-copy-what-Apatow does era, so these different variations on a theme probably won’t be going away anytime soon. You know how the gross-out There’s Something About Mary clones that had Blink 182 songs in their trailers 10 years ago now look even more ridiculous? What will we say about the current generation of comedy? That it matured from the last one? That it opened the door for complex emotions to be mixed in with the funny? That most of the men’s girlfriends in the movies are way more attractive than them?

Dinner For Schmucks is a remake of a French film that I’d never heard of, but I’m now curious about with a decent premise. Paul Rudd is climbing his way up the corporate ladder and finds out that his bosses host a yearly dinner where they invite borderline retarded people over and snicker at them under their breath. Rudd stumbles across Steve Carell’s character who makes dioramas using stuffed mice and the movie takes care of itself. There are a bunch of other really funny people who make appearances/cameos but unfortunately they’re not given much to do so it’s a bit of a waste. In fact, the only people that made me laugh the few times that I did throughout the film were Kristen Schaal and Steve Carell and the former had a much better laugh-to-time-onscreen ratio than the latter. The most disappointing role however was Paul Rudd’s where he is given the thankless task of playing a humorless worry wart which he already perfected in last year’s I Love You, Man. Coming off of some of his best work in that film and Role Models, it’s very frustrating watching such a charming and funny actor given such sub-par material here (he basically has to play Ben Stiller’s role in Meet The Parents, also by Jay Roach, with all the stakes lowered by about 50%). Zack Galifianakis gets to play a pretty significant role which I’ll admit is slightly fun, but doesn’t make you laugh as much as make you think something really funny is about to happen but never does. I’ve been worried about Mr. Galifianakis for a while now since Hollywood seems dead set on making him another Will Ferrell or John Belushi, which would be fine if he fit that mold but he’s even more intellectual and absurd than that.

About 2/3 of the way through this movie I suddenly realized that this is a very PG-13 world the story is in. I then began to think to myself (instead of being riveted to what was happening onscreen, if that tells you anything), “What was the last PG-13 comedy I really enjoyed?” I could come up with an answer. Without checking my archives I’ll go ahead and take a stab at Gentlemen Broncos, but I’m not sure what that was rated. I’m sure all of the improvising helped make this movie more interesting than it would’ve been on its own, especially with such a master like Carell, but I’d be willing to sacrifice some of that for some vision and storytelling specificity on the part of the filmmakers. But maybe we’ll look back at this scriptless era as the beginning of something truly great. They certainly beat most dramas nowadays.

By:  Matt Payton

Rated PG-13 for sequences of crude and sexual content, some partial nudity and language.

(Two Stars)