review- Dinner For Schmucks

I was in desperate need of comedic diversion this afternoon and the news headlines just weren't doing the trick this time around. So I caved in and ventured out to the multiplex for Hollywood's latest remake "Dinner For Schmucks". Raggedy narrative notwithstanding, the movie was full of enough laughs to make me not regret taking the cinematic plunge.

Loosely based on the 1998 French film "The Dinner Game" (which was adapted from a stage play of the same name), "Dinner For Schmucks" stars Paul Rudd as Tim Conrad, a rising executive who "succeeds" in finding the perfect guest in an IRS employee Barry Speck (Steve Carell), for his boss's monthly event: a so-called "dinner for idiots". The gathering offers certain advantages to the executive who shows up with the biggest buffoon.

With the usual requisite doses of some crude sexual content, partial nudity and profanity, there are parts in this movie that are laugh-out-loud funny. Steve Carell carries the picture of course, but the rest of the cast are up to the challenge. The actual "dinner" comes toward the end. I wondered how different things would have been if the dinner were more the centerpiece of the film.