Dinner for Schmucks review

What makes Jay Roach's remake "Dinner for Schmucks" work is what could and has killed other comedies. The movie was unhinged almost from square one and that's something more so reserved for smaller comedies from the independent market. Now it's not full blown and all the way out there, but it's pretty damn near it. The result is a surprisingly very funny picture that mixes mainstream punchline humor, mild slap stick and situational humor in a way that works and doesn't quite tire you out.

Now all this said Steve Carrell and Paul Rudd have played these characters before. They're great at playing people like this, however it's all slightly tilted. Carrell's Barry could be compared with Brick from "Anchorman" mixed with Michael Scott from "The Office". By the way this isn't leading to a backhanded insult, that mixture is oddly fantastic and takes what could've been a pretty one note character that's hit or miss with laughs and actually makes him constantly quite funny. In Roger Ebert's review he made a great point in stating that it's funnier when someone generally doesn't know they are doing something ridiculous and is thus quite serious about it. He's 100% correct. Rudd's character Tim is much like his character in "I Love You, Man", which I'm alone in thinking was just ok apparently. Rudd is a great cynic and his Tim keeps that streak alive. He's much more of the straight man than usual though so expect more laughs at his expense then at his actions.

The strongest piece of the puzzle though is the supporting cast which is loaded with talent across the board. From the office workers and bosses like Bruce Greenwood, Ron Livingston and Kristen Schaal to the various other schmucks like Zack Galifianakis, Lucy Punch and Jemaine Clement; they all get more than enough space to dig in and have their moments of glory. In fact it feels rare to see a mainstream comedy like this really giving out it's space to just about everybody in the film. It reminds me kind of like the heyday of action-comedies where you had your two leads and then you got the full experience of meeting all the crazy people along their adventure. Hopefully "The Other Guys" will have a little of that in it.

Really the only thing that holds "Dinner for Schmucks" back is it's run time and it's tie-it-all up ending. The ending was an issue I kind of had with "Role Models" as well where I felt like things are ended up very unrealistically clean. However that was a small dent in what was otherwise extremely funny and entertaining. The run time is just a touch longer than it ought to be though. If the film had crossed the two hour mark then I think it might not have fared quite so well overall, much like a lot of Broken Lizard's films. As the film stands there's far more action taking place in a short period of time then I expected which gets a little exhausting at times, but once the dinner kicks off we get a nice mixture of different characters and different humors so we're not bombarded with the same things over and over again. I've gotta say while Jay Roach's last couple of directorial efforts left me cold ("Meet the Fockers" and "Austin Powers in Goldmember"), especially considering his work of the prior films in those series'; "Dinner for Schmucks" more than makes up for those missteps and is one of the few impressive and highly entertaining comedies I've seen this summer.