After the comedy disaster that was Date Night earlier in the year I was hoping that Steve Carell's follow up comedy Dinner For Schmucks would be a return to form. After all Date Night was produced by the legendary screw-up studio Twentieth Century Fox and directed by Shawn Levey, he of the offensive Pink Panther remake... I should have seen that one coming. But with Fockers/Austin Powers Jay Roach directing, and his Anchorman co-star Paul Rudd by his side, Schmucks should be much, much better.
It's not.
Dinner For Schmucks is tedium incarnate. Whenever you see Rudd onscreen (an actor I quite like) there's always the nagging feeling that Rudd is standing in for Ben Stiller. It's the kind of thing that Stiller was engineered for...the everyman who digs himself into a hole of social embarrassment, faltering professionalism and a crumbling relationship. Stiller does it in his sleep but frankly, Rudd struggles.
Worse still is Carell as the idiot Rudd befriends. Since we know Carell can do stupid up there with the best of them (Brick Tamland), he should have knocked it out of the park, but here he's restrained and uninspired. The script is weak and joke free and the climactic party is about as clear of humour as you can get without watching Precious and The Road back-to-back.
Only Flight Of The Concord's Jemaine Clement impresses as an self obsessed artist, as does token love interest Stephanie Szostak, but nothing else does. If there were laws against humourless Hollywood comedies then Dinner For Schmucks would get a life sentence.
1 comment:
Thanks for the warning. Even with the talent involved the trailer for this looked kinda pants. It didn't make me laugh once. And that's pretty much fatal for a comedy film.
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