Dinner for Schmucks - D+ (!)

In theaters. Rated PG-13, 114 minutes. Trailer.

More like movie for schmucks (rimshot). I don't understand how so many talented people could make a movie this bad. Starring Steve Carell and Paul Rudd with supporting work from Jemaine Clement, Zach Galifinakis, Ron Livingston and Kristen Schaal and directed by notable director Jay Roach, this film is this year's Invention of Lying - a Lawyer dream on paper, a Lawyer nightmare onscreen. The film is an adaptation of a French film and tells the story of an up and coming executive (Rudd) that gets invited to a dinner where dorks are invited and made fun of unknowingly by the 'cool' executives. In our case, Carell serves as the dork and chief irritant. Click below for more DFS:

After Rudd hits Carell with his car, the two suddenly become inexplicably inseparable after Carell reveals his hobby of mouse dioramas. Rudd has found his dupe for the dinner and apparently his new best friend. The dinner comes at a key time in Rudd's career - if the dinner goes well, Rudd will get a huge promotion. He is also trying to get his girlfriend to marry him - but she doesn't approve of his participation in the dinner. What a quandary - he then inexplicably lies to his wife that he is going - makes no sense at all. He ends up going to the dinner after lots of 'hijinks' and then turns on his boss and co-workers in favor of all of the dorks, thereby ruining his career.

At about 30 minutes in, this film was starting to settle in as a B-, but then Jay Roach steered the plane straight toward the earth and it ended at a D+. Why isn't it funny? Because Steve Carell as the lovable dork has been done and redone 1 million times. But, mostly because the script is terrible and the Jay Roach apparently thought he was directing a self-esteem video for sixth graders.

The corporate guys that Rudd tries to impress are all 1 dimensional cliched characters. Rudd's wife is apparently naive enough to think that people shouldn't be made fun of, even if you're whole career depends on it and the people you're making fun of don't know or care in the first place. The film is all over the place tonally, switching from madcap physical comedy to sappy sentimentality in the blink of an eye. The final scene with the bird, the fire, the broken glass and the loser solidarity nearly made me charge the screen. The scene with Carell and Rudd's ex-girlfriend is so unfunny it hurts.

I would've given this an F if not for Jemaine Clement's artist character - he delivers plenty of one liners and weird animal non-sequitirs to at least get you through the film. ZG isn't funny even for one second.

BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO.