Dinner for Schmucks

Dinner for Schmucks *** (3 Stars)

Director: Jay Roach

Starring: Steve Carell, Paul Rudd, Zach Galifianakis, Bruce Greenwood, and Jemaine Clement

MPAA: Rated PG-13 for sequences of crude and sexual content, some partial nudity and language.

I haven’t laughed this hard since I saw “The Other Guys” earlier this month. I guess that isn’t saying much, but you have to realize I practically peed my pants at that movie, and at “Dinner For Schmucks” I left the theater with an aching body I had been laughing so hard and so long.

At first I thought Dinner for Schmucks was not one of those batty Saturday Night Live skit style films; but then I realized this is a movie directed by the man responsible for the Austin Powers series and the Meet the Parents films, both long SNL skits with SNL casts. Dinner for Schmucks takes what was funny about those films and combines it with the antics of comics Steve Carell and Paul Rudd to make a film that shook the theater walls with laughter.



Dinner for Schmucks is the beginnings of a hybrid between the classic SNL film style and the newer comedy style of The 40-Year-Old Virgin and Knocked Up. While all these films have their roots in the slightly perverted sexual comedy Dinner for Schmucks manages to be considerably toned down compared to Austin Powers or Knocked Up.

This is still a wacky sort of comedy. The premise for the film is an odd buddy comedy matchup between the corporate ladder climber Paul Rudd and the lonely taxidermist and socially retarded Steve Carell. In order for Rudd to make his promotion at work he must bring an idiot to a work dinner. The purpose of these dinners is for the corporate guys to display their idiots for amusement.



While Rudd is bothered by the prospect of mocking innocent idiots he runs into (literally) Carell, whose special hobby is stuffing mice and using them to make vignette scenes such as The Last Supper. Rudd decides this is a sign and invites Carell to the dinner. What happens though is a long series of disastrous events with Rudd lying to his girlfriend, Carell inviting over Rudd’s personal stalker, and the star of Flight of the Concords Jemaine Clement’s bizarre cameo as out-to-lunch artist trying to steal Paul Rudd’s girl. This mix brought tears to my eyes as I tried to hold my guts in, I was laughing so hard.

What really works here is Steve Carell’s innocent character. This is not the
Michael Scott, the idiotic and rude social inept of The Office. This is a sweet, mild mannered and innocent man whose story is almost heart breaking; but whose incapability of normal social interaction causes more problems than Bugs Bunny to Daffy Duck. Carell is just so innocent though that anything he does is just passed off as “oh that poor man” instead of “what a moron”.



Dinner for Schmucks is a little bit of a dirty comedy. There are a lot of sexual jokes and profanity. However this is also one of the funnier films this summer. I’m giving this movie a solid 7.5 out of 10. The plot here is not brilliant by any stretch, but the characters are so wild and bizarre and the whole thing so entertaining it is a winner in my book.

Sex/Nudity – 6 out of 10 – There are a lot of sexual jokes and references. We see a picture of a woman’s bottom in skimpy panties with a message “are you touching yourself?” We see a man and two women being photographed they have only feathers covering their genitals and the woman have feathers over their breasts, the man invites two other men to have sex with him and the two women, the men decline the offer. There are a lot of cleavage revealing outfits as well.

Violence/Gore – 4 out of 10 – A man cuts off another man’s finger we see blood on the severed ends and a vulture takes the finger and flies away with it. A woman chases a man around an apartment in a playful way until he throws a blanket over her head and she fall over a railing, then she begins throwing bottles of wine at him.

Profanity – 6 out of 10 – 2 or 3 F-words, around 100 or so other obscenities and sexual references as well as religious exclamations.