After two straight weeks of adrenaline-raising debuts from "Inception" and "Salt," a trip to the multiplex this weekend might not tax your blood pressure so much as your funny bone, because "Dinner for Schmucks" is now in the mix.
Paul Rudd and Steve Carell's new comedy will likely not sell enough tickets to prevent "Inception" from winning a third straight weekend at the box office. But these two funnymen — reuniting again after "The 40 Year-Old Virgin" and "Anchorman" — should provide stiff competition for Angelina Jolie's "Salt."
Which flick will triumph? It all may depend of word-of-mouth, so MTV News took a look at what the critics are saying about "Schmucks."
The Story
"Carell plays the schmuck of 'Schmucks,' a cheerily moronic walking disaster named Barry, who is befriended by Tim (Paul Rudd), a rising businessman seeking to get ahead with his boss (Bruce Greenwood). As in the 1998 French film 'The Dinner Game,' on which the new movie's based, the boss holds parties where each employee brings a twit; the best twit wins a prize without knowing he's actually the evening's biggest joke. The movie pretends to be appalled at the cruelty of this notion, but its heart isn't in it; these days, mocking the afflicted and the affected is an established source of profits for Hollywood in general and Roach in particular. Barry is Tim's chosen twit, and within hours of their meeting he has reduced his new friend's life to itty-bitty pieces of rubble.' — Ty Burr, Boston Globe
The Performances
"Carell is perfectly in his element as a sweet-natured, well-meaning guy who becomes a tornado of destruction in Tim's life, and the script comes up with clever ways for him to cause this trouble without meaning to. But there's a problem, not a huge or fatal one, but something that tempers the intensity of the comedy throughout: Because Tim is not powerful, not rich and not a terrible person, and because he's played by Paul Rudd, who is about as likable as a beagle puppy, the spectacle of seeing his property destroyed and his relationships damaged is not one we witness with abandoned glee. We laugh. We enjoy it, but without the sadistic giddiness that might have put this one over the top." — Mick LaSalle, San Francisco Chronicle
The Directing
"Roach may be the least organic director of comedy currently working in Hollywood. Other directors strive for svelte invisibility, teeing up their setups so imperceptibly that all the actors have to do is roll up and take a clean spike at the ball. Roach is down in the sand pit, furiously digging his way out, passing off the sweaty contrivance of his set pieces as comic zaniness. It's more like a form of comic epilepsy: He whips up the performances to almost unendurable levels of frenzy and then discards them for someone new, like a bored child riffling through toys." — Tom Shone, Slate
The Supporting Players
"The success of this movie, following a formula upheld by just about any recent hit comedy you can name, lies as much with supporting players and plot-derailing set pieces as with the central story and characters. Jemaine Clement (of the comedy duo Flight of the Conchords) as a pompous, goatish artist; Zach Galifianakis as an I.R.S. flunky who believes he has the power to control other minds; Lucy Punch as a lovestruck stalker with no control over anything: these are the people who propel the movie on its meandering, offbeat path toward a madly farcical climax followed, inevitably and less happily, by a soft and sentimental dénouement." — A.O. Scott, The New York Times
The Final Word
"'Dinner for Schmucks' is as light as a fistful of feathers — as a comedy in the age of Apatow, it's barely there. But the sharp cast is smart enough not to weigh down the airy tale with heavy shtick (which might have been a temptation), and director Jay Roach lays out the story with straightforward simplicity. The movie becomes funnier than you might expect at the beginning; as summer comedies go, it's a small surprise." — Kurt Loder, MTV News
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