Review: Dinner for Schmucks

Grade: B

Tim is an ambitious and hard worker at a financial firm. One day, an executive at the firm is laid off so big promotion is now up for grabs. The owner of the company, Lance Fender, takes an interest in Tim and says he can have the promotion on one condition: Once a month, Lance and the other executives hold a dinner where everyone finds an idiot and presents them at dinner, the biggest idiot wins. If Tim participates in this dinner and wins, he’ll get the promotion. At first, Tim doesn’t want to participate as he finds the concept a bit atrocious, but when he literally runs into an obvious idiot, Barry, on the street, he decides to give it a try. Barry gets confused and keeps showing up at Tim’s house a day or two before the dinner and begins to slowly destroy Tim’s life.

This movie is actually really funny. Paul Rudd (I Love You Man, Role Models) plays Tim and Steve Carell (Date Night, TV’s The Office) plays Barry in the movie. I really enjoy both of these actors, they are both very funny and they worked well together in 40 Year Old Virgin, so I was pretty excited to see them back together. They really play off each other very well and their dynamic together really helps the movie. The movie definitely delivers plenty of laughs but there are some parts that I just really didn’t care for. One thing that amused me is that Tim has a girlfriend who he wants to marry, he is supposedly in love with her but the movie doesn’t do a great job displaying their relationship as through the whole movie I kept wondering why he was with her, she has rejected his marriage proposal multiple times, she doesn’t trust him and just doesn’t seem to care half the time.

The rest of the cast is hilarious as well. Zach Galifianakis (Youth in Revolt, The Hangover) plays Therman, Barry’s boss who believes he can control people’s minds. I have always thought Galifianakis was funny and it is great to see him doing more movies now, he is hilarious. Jemaine Clement (TV’s The Flight of the Conchords) played Kieran, an eccentric and self obsessed artist. Clement totally steals the show in this movie, his character is absolutely hilarious and I couldn’t get enough of him. Bruce Greenwood (Star Trek, National Treasure 2) plays Lance Fender, the owner of the company Tim works for and host of the dinner. Greenwood is great and his character is very enjoyable in this movie. The rest of the cast includes Ron Livingston, Stephanie Szostak, Larry Wilmore, Lucy Punch, Kristen Schaal and Nick Kroll.

This movie is pretty enjoyable and very funny at times so I recommend anybody looking for a light hearted comedy to go check out this movie.