Dinner for Schmucks (2010)

Directed by: Jay Roach | 114 minutes | comedy | Actors: Paul Rudd, Steve Carell, Zach Galifianakis, Jemaine Clement, Stephanie Szostak, Lucy Punch, Bruce Greenwood, David Walliams, Ron Livingston, Larry Wilmore, Kristen Schaal, PJ Byrne, Andrea Savage, Nick Kroll, Randall Park, Lucy Davenport, Chris O’Dowd, Jeff Dunham, Octavia Spencer, Patrick Fischler, Rick Overton, Eric Winzenried, Nicole LaLiberte, Maria Zyrianova, Scott Weintraub

One claims to be able to talk to dead animals, the other is married to his hand puppet and a third is swinging swords around while he is completely blind. Seen in that light, the hobby of Barry Speck (Steve Carell) is not that crazy: he is an amateur taxidermist who creates scenes with dead mice in an impressive way. They act out scenes from his own life, or represent important events from the past. Slightly snobbish career man Tim Conrad (Paul Rudd) sees Barry, who accidentally walks in front of the wheels of his Porsche one day, as the biggest lunatic around. And he just needs an idiot to impress his boss Lance Fender (Bruce Greenwood), who has promised him a promotion. The ambitious Tim has to renounce his principles for this: the high bosses of Fender Financial meet weekly to dine with idiots brought by themselves and whoever brings the biggest idiot to the table has a good chance of winning that coveted promotion.

‘Dinner for Schmucks’ (2010) may be a remake of Francis Veber’s classic comedy ‘Le diner de cons’ (1998), in itself the set-up of this Jay Roach-directed film sounds original and therefore promising. The fact that, in addition to Steve Carell, comedians such as Zach Galifianakis, Jemaine Clement and David Walliams can be seen in the film, adds to that. Unfortunately ‘Dinner for Schmucks’ does not live up to those high expectations. This is partly due to the unbalanced central characters. On the one hand, Barry is the ignorant, obnoxious stalker who never misses an opportunity to disrupt Tim’s career and private life. On the other hand, Roach and writers David Guion and Michael Handelman try to infuse him with something of tragedy. He turns out to be sensitive and to have a primitive kind of intelligence. The problem is, just when you start to see him as a flesh-and-blood human being, he’s taken down again by the cheesiness of the script. Tim, in turn, can hardly be called sympathetic. In fact, he misuses the silly Barry’s kindness for his own gain. In that respect, it is his deserved wages that he gets himself into trouble – thanks to Barry.

It is therefore remarkable that Rudd and, surprisingly enough, Carell are occasionally surpassed by actors in supporting roles. Galifianakis and Clement in particular are having a good time. They are lucky that it doesn’t matter that their roles are one-dimensional – they are not the heart or conscience of the film. Unfortunately, there are very few really funny fragments. It usually does not yield more than a hesitant chuckle. Maybe that’s also because funny scenes are drawn out way too long – with the result that after the meeting between Barry and Tim we have to wait for an hour until it’s finally time for the much-discussed dinner and that hour is filled with annoying scenes and a excess of silly humour. With its 114 minutes, ‘Dinner for Schmucks’ is far too long, especially for a comedy that already has to contend with predictability. Only sporadically does Roach manage to touch his audience – and it is of course Barry who takes the credit. The best find of ‘Dinner for Schmucks’ are his beautiful ‘Mous-terpieces’, which we can enjoy not only in the opening credits, but also towards the end of the film. If only we had a movie full of those mouse scenes, that would probably have made for a nicer movie.

‘Dinner for Schmucks’ will undoubtedly be a hit with fans of American (modern) comedy. If you look at this film without prejudice, you will see that Jay Roach is really wrong this time. About Barry alone – and his beautiful ‘Mous-terpieces’ can still make a decent film. Now we are left with a film that is too long that is only really fun sporadically and that also lets a variety of unsympathetic characters pass us by. No, we prefer the original.