Monday, January 10, 2011

Dinner for Schmucks - DVD Review

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Starring Steve Carell, Paul Rudd, Jemaine Clement, Zach Galifianakis, Bruce Greenwood, Stephanie Szostak, Lucy Punch, Ron Livingston, Kristen Schaal, Jeff Dunham, David Walliams and Larry Wilmore.
Directed by Jay Roach.

Plenty of talent behind this effort, so where does it go wrong?

Let's start with Steve Carell's Barry. Who or what is he? Most of the time he's clueless, just a naive idiot. Every once in a while though he has flashes of awareness. Usually a well-defined character will get laughs from acting in expected ways. Non sequitur behavior here is just off-putting.

Next is Paul Rudd, nice guy. The straight man role here would've benefitted if he were more of a schmuck, someone who might deserve his life to be destroyed a bit by Barry.

This movie is like a recipe full of delicious ingredients on their own but they don't mix well together. The best parts for me were with Jemaine Clement as a self-absorbed artist, and the dinner itself. Everything else was more like cluttered noise.

Side-note: Jemaine Clement (Flight of the Concords) was also the best thing about the otherwise terrible Gentlemen Broncos. I'm sensing a trend here.

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