REVIEW: ‘Dinner for Schmucks’

The plot of “Dinner for Schmucks” is simple.  Tim (Paul Rudd) comes up with a once-in-a-lifetime idea to impress his boss and save his company.  His boss gives him one shot to get it right, which puts him in contact with someone with whom he never would have otherwise met, who turns his life upside down in a number of highly comical ways, and shows him the value of his relationship with his girlfriend by nearly causing it to end.  Yet through it all, this wise, though unconventional, stranger teaches our hero the true meaning of love and friendship.

If this sounds familiar, you’ve either seen the original French film, 1999’s “Le Dîner de Cons” (“The Dinner Game”), or you’ve seen this year’s “Get Him to the Greek.”  Both films are hysterically funny, but both follow a similar path—our leading man must learn what’s really important through spending time with a wild and crazy guy.

In order to get the big promotion, Tim must win over the big client, and also bring along the best idiot to his boss’ “Dinner for Winners.”  The biggest loser (and not in the Jillian Michaels’ sense) gets a trophy and is “released back into the wild” with no clue he or she has been the butt of the joke all night, and his or her escort gets office bragging rights and the boss’ good favor.  For Tim, this could mean a move up to the seventh floor—an office space coveted for not smelling like cabbage.

Tim’s girlfriend, Julie (Stephanie Szostak), like most rational people who aren’t creating summer comedies, thinks this is a terrible idea.  Tim and Julie fight, and Julie runs to a meeting with, and possibly the arms of, her artist client Kieran (Jemaine Clement—I tell you this so you don’t spend the entire film wondering how they got hair on David Cross, as I did).

Tim’s better senses follow his better half, and he decides to decline the dinner invitation, until he hits Barry (Steve Carell) with his car.  Barry was in the road to pick up a dead mouse—another muse in his long line of “Mouseterpieces,” and is excited to have been hit by Tim’s Porsche, previously he’s only been hit by a Datsun.  Barry then spends the next twenty four hours “helping” Tim, and ruining everything in his life possibly worth ruining.

When the dinner finally arrives, Barry seems like a shoo-in to win, until his arch-nemesis, Therman (Zach Galifianakis) arrives. (Therman gets the biggest laugh earlier in the film when he takes off his jacket in his office.)  Not only is Therman Barry’s boss, but he has also stolen Barry’s wife (and when you see her, you suddenly understand why all his female mouse muses have red hair), and, as if that weren’t enough, Therman is a master of mind control.

By this point, Tim has come to realize the error of his selfish ways, and has to find a way to preserve Barry’s dignity and self-confidence, even if that means giving up the big job.  The film’s sweet side is revealed, albeit hilariously, and the recurring theme that “everything happens for a reason” is proven true.

Stay for the epilogue—although it will make you check under your bed for the foreseeable future.