“Dinner for Schmucks” Only Whets the Appetite.
A Film Review by Jason Gregg

“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, unbeknownst 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.