‘Dinner for Schmucks’ is an acquired taste

It sounds like the perfect recipe for a top-flight Hollywood comedy. With the award-winning French farce Le Diner de Cons (The Dinner Game) as your inspiration, take two of America's most successful comedians - Steve Carell and Paul Rudd - and put them in their third movie together. Finally, add the director of the hit films Meet the Parents and Austin Powers, Jay Roach, and blend.
 
What you get is Dinner for Schmucks, the new US comedy which - despite its promising concept, cast and crew - is not to everyone's taste.
 
The film features Rudd as an ambitious executive, Tim, who is angling for a promotion. In an effort to impress his boss, he agrees to invite the weirdest loser - or schmuck - he can to a dinner where a prize is offered for the most eccentric guest.
 
As to who Tim can bring along, he is at a loss until he meets Barry Speck (Carell), tax agent and guileless idiot savant whose passion is making dioramas from history using dead mice dressed as humans (his "mousterpieces").
 
The film, which also stars David Walliams, Kristen Schaal and Chris O’Dowd, gets a three-star review from
Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times,  who declared Carell's performance "genius", while Variety's Peter Deburge called it "an uproarious odd-couple remake".
 
But some have found the film unappetising. Kenneth Turan of the Los Angeles Times called it "distinctly unfunny" while Empire's William Thomas said it "brings little fresh to the table".
 
 
WHAT THE CRITICS ARE SAYING:
 
AO Scott, the New York Times:  "/Dinner for Schmucks/ is not a great movie, or even a coherent one, but in nearly every scene it draws laughter from an impressively eclectic array of sources, both obvious and new... It is less a full-scale comic feast than a buffet of amusing snacks, and while it does not necessarily exalt or flatter your intelligence, it doesn’t treat you like an idiot, either."

Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times: "The genius of this version depends on the performance by Steve Carell, who plays Barry Speck as a man impervious to insult and utterly at peace with himself. He's truly a transcendent idiot." (3/5 stars)
 
 
Peter Debruge, Variety: "The social tension underlying the whole equation suggests an opportunity for some truly provocative comedy (in the vein of Lars von Trier's The Idiots, perhaps), but Schmucks plays it safe, sticking with screwball, and that's just as well."

Dave Calhoun, Time Out: "Few gags hit the mark, and the ultimate parade of 'idiots' is a failure, especially as someone mistook 'stupid' for 'eccentric'." (2/5 stars)

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