Review of Dinner for Schmucks (2010) by Jordyn S — 15 Feb 2012

The real reason this French-adapted film became popular with the crowd was for the superb cast: Paul Rudd, Steve Carrell, Zach Galianifikis, Jeff Dunham... oh I can seriously go on, but where Dinner for Schmucks fell short was the story.

Tim has finally got the chance to move up a spot in his job, but first he has to bring the biggest schmuck to the bosses monthly dinner, called "dinner for idiots". Just as soon as Tim leaves his job, he runs over a taxidermist named Barry, a very big buffoon and into making dioramas of mice. Tim decides to invite Barry to dinner, but he does it behind his girlfriend's back because she thinks that the dinner is cruel and pathetic. Once she finds out though, she begins to loose trust in Tim, and now he has to worry not only about becoming an executive, but also about keeping his life together while Barry is in his company.

Dinner for Schmucks held a handful of laugh out loud moments and slight chuckles, thanks to the talented Steve Carrell who plays Barry. He portrays the ideal schmuck, obsessed with weird talents and acting clueless at obvious times. If Steve Carrell had not been in this movie, many people honestly would have not seen it, since Steve presented just about all of the jokes in the film. But he shared most of them with Paul Rudd, an amazing comedic actor who has starred in the most hilarious movies in the past 6 years. Paul plays Tim, and it was impressive how he kept his character acting sad and overwhelmed but still funny. If it had not been for the wild cast I am sure Dinner for Schmucks would have not been funny at all; after all, only the cast made it funny.

The story was not very genius honestly, and as the film endured, it became overwhelming to see so many things go wrong. Most of the humor was dry and not very originalI was honestly upset because I expected a better film with Rudd and Carrell than this one. All in all, Dinner for schmucks was a very lacking comedy and if it wasn't for the comedic cast, it would have easily gone under the radar. Dinner for Schmucks is the ideal movie for Schmucks.