Dinner for Schmucks
Opens Nationwide in the US Friday, July 30.
Review by Larry West
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A guilty pleasure of just about everyone is insulting someone else. Some of us aren’t proud of it, while others enjoy it. Some call it people watching. Some call it for what it is. In Dinner For Schmucks, we see a group of successful businessmen that enjoy hosting dinners for people they see as schmucks. They can in turn, sit around and laugh at the ridiculous rantings of these “guests” and the end of the night the biggest idiot gets an award.
On its face, the premise of the film is absurdly brilliant. The idea of seeing a table full of ridiculous characters eating dinner in a room filled with people in on the joke, can only leave space for some brilliant comedy. The real focus of the film, however, is the relationship between Tim Conrad (Paul Rudd) and Barry Speck (Steve Carell). Barry is your classic lovable-loser. He spends his free time building dioramas of scenes using dead mice. He means well, but constantly screws up when trying to do the right thing. Tim, who is trying to get a promotion at his financial firm, finds Barry to be a perfect schmuck and invites him to the dinner. We’re also introduced to his struggling artist of a girlfriend who is not quite ready for marriage and appears to be getting some extra lovin’ on the side.
The premise of the film does not directly parallel motifs represented in Best in Show or A Mighty Wind, dealing in the odd worlds of a specific group of people, plunging the moviegoer right into the middle of a foreign land. Although at first I thought Dinner For Schmucks was heading in this direction, I was wrong.Dinner for Schmucks instead, has many parallels with Director Jay Roach’s, Meet the Parents, where the real absurdity is the people you are now forced to cope with, who think their odd behavior is normal and we need to simply deal with it.
Dinner for Schmucks falls into the traps of most American comedy films, with the periodic bad joke about office life and relationships, and the feeling that most of the characters come off as being 2-dimensional. When even the interesting people begin to come off as flat and formulaic, you have a problem.
That’s not to say this is a bad film, though. Quite the contrary, it actually forces the better actors to pull out their A-game. We see Steve Carell pull off a great performance, as well as Zach Galifianakis who plays Therman – Barry’s arch-nemesis in the film. Therman also works in the IRS, believes he has mind-control powers, and uses them to torture Barry to no end whenever they meet. Therman is a bully throughout, even going so far as to flaunt the fact that he took away the most precious thing in Barry’s life. The scene at dinner is an epic showdown that is sure to leave you in stitches! The chemistry between these actors is amazing, and is the main saving grace of this film.
The biggest complaint for me was that it was 2 hours long, simply because they spend too much time trying to develop the relationship between Tim and Barry. Did we need the constant reminder that Barry was inept, yet still inherently kind? It comes off as unnecessary and hurts the flow of the film.
While Dinner for Schmucks is based on a 1998 French Film called The Dinner Game, which was the same basic plot, it actually reminds me more of the 1932 film Freaks. The film was based around a traveling circus freak act with a premise not intended to simply shock you with these real-world oddities, but to make them human and force you to understand them and their struggles. Dinner for Schmucks does the same, showing how all of these characters may be considered “losers” to some, but in actuality these people are interesting and fun. The overall lesson is best summed up by a misquote from John Lennon used in the film, “You may say I’m a dreamer, but I’m not.”
Dinner For Schmucks works well. The chemistry and scenes built around Barry and Therman’s relationship are worth the ten-dollar admission.
3 ½ stars out of 5.
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