A plateful of dumb: 2 hours is too big a serving of ‘Schmucks’ - Entertainment, Movies - Air Force Times

A plateful of dumb: 2 hours is too big a serving of ‘Schmucks’

The French have always loved farce, as evidenced by their unnerving affinity for Jerry Lewis. And no one in Hollywood ever goes broke overestimating the appetite of American audiences for movies loaded with, how you say, le stupeed.

So “Dinner for Schmucks,” an Anglo retake on “Le Diner de Cons” — about snide corporate weasels who stage a monthly dinner party to which buffoonish, unwitting guests are invited, solely to be ridiculed — seems like a no-brainer.

Literally and figuratively.

But something’s lost in translation here; while the film offers a modicum of surreal and absurd laughs, a lot of the material feels forced — and at two hours, there’s too much of it.

Too many flicks these days don’t know when to quit, and “Dinner for Schmucks” is no exception. More is not necessarily better, especially with this kind of film; a little dumb goes a long way, and stretching such a flimsy story to two hours is ridiculous.

It’s particularly heavy on setup exposition; director Jay Roach and writers David Guion and Michael Handelman seek to establish the goofball pedigree of their main character, Barry (Steve Carell) in multiple scenes of him committing social blunders that exponentially complicate the life of hungry young business executive Tim (Paul Rudd).

Problem is, we get about two or three more such scenes than are necessary to accomplish that modest goal; in fact, the dinner of the title doesn’t commence until well into the film’s second hour.

What should be breezy turns sluggish, as that little voice in the back of your head pipes up: “Let’s get on with it, already!”

Tim is gunning for a promotion at his private equity firm, which he hopes will finally impress Julie (Stephanie Szostak), an art curator, into marrying him.

Then his smarmy boss (Bruce Greenwood) informs Tim that the promotion is contingent upon him finding a suitable guest for the monthly dinner, at which someone is always crowned “biggest idiot.”

Tim has no idea how he’ll find such a person. Then he almost runs over Barry with his Porsche.

With a dweeby haircut and overbite that evoke Jim Carrey in “Dumb & Dumber,” Barry is an IRS drone and amateur taxidermist whose passion is creating “mousterpieces” — fantastic dioramas featuring stuffed, costumed mice (his rodential “Last Supper” tableau is a jaw-dropper).

Tim thinks he has found the perfect guest for his boss’s dinner. But it’s soon clear that where Barry is concerned, well … “socially maladjusted” doesn’t begin to describe it. In fact, Barry is a maladjustment tornado who soon wreaks havoc in every corner of Tim’s life.

Barry does all this unwittingly; he’s well-meaning to a fault and doesn’t have a malicious bone in his body. And that’s another of the film’s problems.

Despite Barry’s artistic talent (such as it is), the character is essentially drawn as a purebred simpleton, to a degree that begins to grate — and that may begin to make you feel a twinge of guilt about guffawing at his expense.

What saves the film is Carell’s uncanny ability to use earnestness to sell doofishness, which keeps Barry tiptoeing along the line that would cross into outright pathos.

The film also benefits greatly from two supporting characters: Zach Galifianakis as Therman, Barry’s IRS supervisor, who claims he can control minds, and “Flight of the Conchords’” Jemaine Clement as Kieran Vollard, a supremely pretentious artiste with a fondness for goats whose sole subject is himself.

In fact, this trio is so mesmerizingly odd that Rudd gets lost in the backwash.

Not that it matters. For Carell fans, “Dinner for Schmucks” is worth a look, but it’s a classic Hollywood summer trifle that is neatly summed up in this pithy declaration by Barry:

“A mind is a terrible thing.”

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Rated PG-13 for language, sexual situations. Got a rant or rave about the movies? E-mail cvinch@militarytimes.com.