Dinner for Schmucks

I went into this one expecting to be served up a generous portion of laughs and heart, but what I got instead was a plate full of cringe-worthiness. I am sure that there are plenty of people out there that find this kind of comedy amusing. I am not one of those people. I have grown so tired of films where constant ineptitude and annoying mannerisms are meant to be played for laughs. Films where the lead idiot wrecks the life of the straight laced square, doesn't even realize he is doing it, and then is given a sob story so you can feel sorry for him instead of angry. The first and pretty much only time that formula has worked on me was in Planes, Trains, and Automobiles.

You get the entire set up inside of the first ten minutes. Tim (Paul Rudd) is looking to move up the corporate ladder, but in order to do so he must first bring a clueless moron to a dinner party in a competition against other clueless morons. Don't ask me what in the hell this has to do with advancing your career. He finds a likely candidate in Barry (Steve Carell). A loner that recreates works of art with dead mice he calls 'mice-trpieces', and openly declares that he has gonorrhea. Ugh.

The actual dinner doesn't occur until the final act of the film which means there is over an hour of filler in this overlong outing. Barry continuously finds ways to destroy Tim's life. He nearly derails a business deal, ruins his relationship, and is the cause of his car being demolished by a psycho ex turned stalker. The list goes on and on. Then we are meant to feel bad for him just because he is unaware of the damage he has done, and because he has been hurt himself.

There just isn't much here to recommend. It is unfunny, cruel, and at times just downright painful to endure. I did however find an exception to all of this in radiant actress Kristen Schaal, the prodigy of Northwestern school of theatre. Her performance here rivals her amazing work in Flight of the Conchords and The Goods. If she continues making films like Dinner for Schmucks I can predict an Oscar nomination for her in the very near future, especially when you consider that most academy voters are typically as dumb as Barry. D