Dinner For Schmucks Review

Dinner for Schmucks is a banquet for morons.

A loose adaptation of the 1999 French film The Dinner Game, Dinner for Schmucks is an awkward comedy of errors with a sense of humour that’s as subtle as rouge on a polar bear.

Paul Rudd assumes a familiar guise as Tim, a go-getting executive who has his eyes firmly set on snatching a newly opened promotion. To get to the top, Tim has to negotiate a make-or-break business deal, but first he’s got to find a schmuck. Enter Barry (Steve Carell). A socially inept taxidermist, Barry’s sure of heart but slow of mind, making him the perfect guest at a dinner party hosted by Tim’s boss, where whoever brings along the biggest weirdo gets his foot in the door to being top dog.

To his credit, Carell gets idiot savant so spot on you’ll be hard pushed not to find some compassion for him. He’s also so annoying you’ll be overwhelmed by the sudden urge to scratch out your eyes with ricin-tipped toothpicks each time his twatish grin flashes up on the screen. Rudd doesn’t fair much better. His ability to ground a bromance may have made him a star, but his shtick has rapidly lost its appeal.

And so we’re left to suffer, right up until the moment the aforementioned dinner date finally rolls around. It’s here a massive oversight surfaces: for at the same time we’re encouraged to frown upon these corporate sleazebags for taking pleasure in ripping their misfit guests, we’re invited to do the exact same thing. When did the peculiarities and debilities of others become acceptable Hollywood punch-line material?

Tim’s moral U-turn might try to counteract the film’s meanheartedness, but by the time his feeble atonement is delivered, the damage has already been done.