It’s not hard to understand why Dinner for Schmucks got a green light to be made. Based on a bitingly funny French movie and with Steve Carrell attached, even before seeing a script it must have destined to be a winner. Watching the movie is therefore a particularly frustrating experience. It keeps seeming like it should be funnier that it is. I found myself simultaneously admiring the comic timing and performances and not laughing. The script sounds like it would read like it would be funny to watch. But, with a few minor exceptions, it isn’t very funny to watch.
Paul Rudd plays a nice guy, Tim, with a very cute girlfriend, Julie. Tim is trying to make his move up to the seventh floor and the nice corner office at a high-powered corporate takeover firm, and Julie is about to make it big on the art scene as a curator and planner of shows. Or something like that. At any rate, they’re a sweet couple with everything going for them. But to impress his boss, Tim must find an idiot to bring to the boss’s monthly dinner party as entertainment for the rich folks. Everyone brings an idiot, and the biggest idiot wins.
Enter Steve Carrell as Barry, an IRS analyst who, in Carrell’s words wants to make people happy but inevitably makes them miserable instead. He’s a sweet idiot whose good intentions and idiotic actions start to unravel Tim’s life. Is it funny to watch people making fun of other people? Not really, but I don’t think that’s the problem with this movie, most of which takes place prior to the titular dinner. And in principle, it should be funny to see Tim try to deal with the walking path of good-natured idiotic destruction that is Barry. I’m not sure why it wasn’t very funny. The leads and supporting performances are all very good. Maybe it is the realization that Barry and the other idiots are not really inhabiting the same universe as Tim and Julie and the rest of us. So their struggles and triumphs feel disconnected from our own.