Dinner for Schmucks – Review

You are cordially invited to a dinner like you’ve never seen before.

Tim (Paul Rudd) is an excutive who makes a bold move. His office needs to sign a big time client, and he makes his opinion known that he thinks he should be the one to go after this new client, Mueller (David Walliams). Tim’s boss, Lance Fender (Bruce Greenwood), likes his initiative, and offers him a job on the all mighty 7th floor, with the other bigwigs. There is one catch however. Tim must attend his boss’ monthy dinner party. This is no normal dinner party, as Tim and the other guests have to find the biggest idiot and they laugh at these idiots expense. Tim tells his girlfriend, Julie (Stephanie Szostak) about this party, but she doesn’t like the idea as she feels it is mean. Tim tells her he isn’t going, that is until he literally runs into Barry (Steve Carell) with his car. After talking to Barry for a few minutes, and seeing Barry’s special talent of turning dead mice into works of art by dressing them up, he realizes that he would have the dinner won. There is one problem however, once Tim tells Barry about the dinner, Barry goes on to cause havoc and ruin Tim’s life. Julie walks out on Tim after learning that he intends to go to the party after telling her he wouldn’t. A stalker of Tim’s comes back into his life after Barry talks to her. A lunch meeting with Mueller and his wife is ruined when Barry tries to help.

After sitting through a few minutes of the film, you realize that this is a movie that has been done many times over. In fact, the viewer could possible write the script before it comes out of the actor’s mouth. What makes this movie stand out, however, is the chemistry between Carell and Rudd. It is the type of film that makes it hard to breath because the viewers are laughing so hard and so much. Paul Rudd plays the same type of character he does in films like I LOVE YOU, MAN and ROLE MODELS, but that doesn’t matter here since it works so well with Carell’s Barry. In typical fashion, the mean co-workers get their comeuppance, but there is a pretty good twist to Barry. There is a lot of depth to Barry that you normally wouldn’t see in a stupid comedy. With all the summer blockbusters and thought provoking films that have come out so far this summer, it’s great to sit down for an hour and 50 minutes and just lose yourself in what might be the funniest comedy of the summer so far. The only negative, if there is one, in a movie with dinner in the title, the dinner scene is only about 15 minutes long. This movie is more about leading up to the dinner and the relationships of the characters. Keep a look out for a stand out performance from Jemaine Clement as Kieran, the crazy artist who might or might not be sleeping with Tim’s girlfriend, Julie, who sets up Kieran’s art exhibits.

This is one dinner invitation that you should not turn down.

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