Dinner for Schmucks.

Review by Lucia Santiago Dantes

“Dinner for Schmucks” was a very nice surprise, cute and fun. It is also, a well-balanced movie dealing with comedy and romance. The onstage comedy couple made by Paul Rudd and Steve Carrell simply works. Not so slapstick comedy but also with a heart.
Tim (Rudd) is an executive looking for a promotion in the firm he works. He has it all to go up in the ladder: good attitude, focused, motivated and he’s good at work. In order to get his promotion Tim’s boss invited him to a very peculiar dinner where everyone has to bring an special guest with an “out of the ordinary” characteristic that will make him or her peculiar, the more ridiculous, the better (in other words an idiot). When Tim’s girlfriend, Julie (Stephanie Szostak) knows about this dinner she’s appalled. The same day, Tim meets literally by accident Barry (Steve Carrell) a man so strange that captures Tim’s attention and invites him to the infamous dinner. Little he knew, Barry is a walking disaster creating chaos and disaster on Tim’s personal life.
What I loved the most about Dinner for Schmucks was the whole visual concept surrounding Barry’s character: scale models made with mice recreating idyllic scenes or famous painting. This is actually the first sequence of the film where a couple of mice staged in several romantic moments of their life enjoy the moment together.
The story is very light and it has its moments and it’s the remake of the 1998 french movie “The Dinner Game” (Le dîner de cons)