Despite funny moments, Carell flick gets 2 blades

Dinner for Schmucks

By Andy McKinney
Gazette/Connection Film Critic
Let me begin by saying that there are some truly laugh out loud moments in this movie, and the people in the theater-including your reviewer-did just exactly that.  Star Steve Carell ("40 Year Old Virgin," "Get Smart," "Date Night") is truly at the top of his form. 

He is able to lose himself in this role, which for someone as familiar and as famous as he, is worthy of special notice.  He has a scene early on where he negotiates the cash settlement for a traffic accident that is classic.

Co-star Paul Rudd, a very likable young man, who played in the delightful “Clueless” and starred in the less so “I Love You Man” is in danger of forever being cast as the earnest, decent love interest with nothing more taxing or inspiring ever offered him.  His love interest, Jemaine Clement, is merely beautiful in this film.  There is nothing in her character to make us believe that she could inspire the kind of hopeless devotion that Rudd shows for her. 

Even the reliably very funny Zach Galifianakis ("The Hangover") comes off only as mean, damaged and pathetic.  Both the Carell and Galifianakis characters, dumb, barely functional guys, work for the IRS, which is comic for the writers.

The set up is that Rudd, an ambitious man on the rise, is invited to dinner by his boss.  He is asked to bring someone so dense and stupid that the normal guests can ridicule the victim with the victim being none the wiser. 

The premise is, for me, flawed.  But there is some good stuff too.  The world of contemporary art is savagely lampooned and portrayed as being inhabited by flamboyant, egotistical fools.  And there is an uber wealthy European that is set up for the audience to hate and look down upon.  Did I day these were the good things?

Director Jay Roach is very good at social satire.  He made all three of the “Austin Powers” movies and both of the “Meet the Parents” films as well.  He also made one of my favorite films of all time, the quirky “Mystery Alaska .”  He knows what it takes to please the public.  He may very well be right with this film, but I hope not.

Carell plays a man who is badly equipped for life both intellectually and emotionally.  His two great talents are his deep and abiding innate goodness and his ability to build clever historical and personal dioramas using the corpses of dead mice for his figures.  His hobby is making mouse taxidermy, mostly vignettes of mice dressed as himself and his ex-wife.  This mentally and emotionally challenged man is stripped of every stitch of human dignity in the course of the movie.

At one hour and 50 minutes, the PG-13 “Dinner For Schmucks” brings a lowly two saw blades.  You might like it if you can imagine and enjoy a man in a very dark room juggling flaming kittens.  The act has a certain value as spectacle but for me that is overcome by loathing and disgust for the act itself.