"Dinner for Schmucks"

By Matt Duncan
Coastal View News

There are friends and then there are friends. Some friends are genuine and caring, while others—the merely ‘so-called’ sort—are prone to manipulation and backstabbing. Most people, at some point in their life, have known each kind of friend. But telling the difference—the difference between genuine interest and supercilious game playing—can be a tall task, and an unfair and hurtful one at that. “Dinner for Schmucks” attempts to tap into that drama, and despite fumbling with its material, this movie is worth a laugh or two.

Tim (Paul Rudd) is a promising businessman working at a top financial firm. Like most businessmen, he is ambitious; he wants to do well. However, perhaps unlike what typifies his kind, Tim is also honest and principled; there are some lengths that he will not go to in order to get ahead.

Thus, Tim is ripe for a moral dilemma. After dazzling the higher-ups with an impressive presentation, Tim appears to be on the fast track to a big promotion. But before he can land the job, there is one final step that he must take. He must attend a dinner organized by his boss where each host is responsible for inviting some extraordinarily foolish individual purely for the sardonic enjoyment of the self-important execs who invited them.

True to his more noble self—and at the pleading of his girlfriend, Julie (Stephanie Szostak)—Tim decides that he cannot take part in such cruel behavior. Or, that is what he had decided, until he (literally) runs into the perfect person to invite to the dinner—Barry (Steve Carell). Barry is an eccentric loner whose only friends are the furry mice he stuffs and turns into figurines meant to look like famous people. Barry is just the kind of dope that would surely land Tim the job, and so Tim hesitantly invites him to a dinner for schmucks.

As he has no friends and nothing better to do, Barry is delighted to accept the dinner invitation. However, Barry also interprets the invitation as an offer of full-fledged friendship. As a result, Tim soon finds himself unable to get rid of the overeager and mentally clumsy Barry. Barry’s heart is in the right place, but he cannot help but nose in and ruin just about every aspect of Tim’s life—his home, his job, his health, his relationship with Julie, etc.

As the dinner approaches, Tim frantically attempts to hold the pieces of his life together, all while impressing his boss and swatting away the buzzing gnat that is Barry. This high-wire act forces Tim to choose between being the nice guy who never gets the promotion, and the cut-throat executive who has no real friends.

“Dinner for Schmucks” is better than the previews may suggest, and also better than its absolutely trite story. This modicum of success is largely attributable to the highly loveable leads, Paul Rudd and Steve Carell, as well as to a perhaps even more loveable supporting cast of Zack Galifianakis and Jemaine Clement. This movie relies on individually funny moments—individual lines delivered by funny people—and there are indeed a handful of such moments.

However, “Dinner for Schmucks” has a forgettable story (probably because it feels like an amalgam of so many other movies) and it is way too long. The reason it is way too long has less to do with the number of minutes in the movie and more to do with the tension turned tedium that comes from this movie’s seemingly endless comedy of errors. The slapstick humor and painful mistakes that emanate from Barry are humorously uncomfortable at first, but as time goes on, these mistakes become unbearable to watch. By the end of this movie, one is torn between shouting “I get it already!” and “Tim, would you just shut Barry up already!”

In all, “Dinner for Schmucks” is bearable and even sometimes entertaining. It is the kind of movie that, if you go in with low expectations, you will be pleasantly surprised, but if you go in with high hopes, you are bound to be disappointed.

“Dinner for Schmucks” is rated PG-13 for sequences of crude and sexual content, some partial nudity and language.