Movie Review: Dinner for Schmucks

For about 12 years now, Hollywood has been trying to get an American remake off the ground for an adaptation of Francis Veber’s original Le dîner de cons, or The Dinner Game. Numerous versions of screenplays have failed to make their way to the big screen and the cast has gone through even more variations. Finally, featuring an all star cast of today’s top comic actors, comes Dinner for Schmucks.

The original was written and directed by renowned French farcist Francis Veber and I’m sure it certainly has helped to have him tag along as an executive producer. It’s also interesting to see that neither he nor fellow executive producer Sacha Baron Cohen is listed on the film’s IMDb page. But a farce is a farce and you either love ‘em or hate ‘em, and I love ‘em.

As everyone knows, a farce is of course based more on situational comedy than deep characterization. It’s how everything comes together with events snowballing from one thing to the next mixed with great banter and a smattering of broad slapstick that keeps the plot moving along. Director Jay Roach certainly knows a thing or two about uncomfortable hilarity. After having directed both Meet the Parents and Meet the Fockers, there's no doubt why he was chosen as mastermind to bring David Guion and Michael Handelman’s script to life.

Guion and Handelman’s last produced screenplay was another farce that no one saw starring Zach Braff and Jason Bateman called The Ex. While in no way a classic, it definitely lives up to the expectations of the genre and may be why American audiences shunned it, handing it a quick box office death. Here the filmmakers definitely have a great appreciation for the original and Roach even seems to try to keep things a little French with some of the score's themes. I haven’t seen The Dinner Game in years but it wouldn’t surprise me if the main theme of Schmucks was lifted by Theodore Shapiro from the original film.

Tim (Paul Rudd) works, with his assistant Susana (Kristen Schaal), on the sixth floor of Fender Financial where it smells like cabbage. While the scent has never kept Susana from getting laid, they both just want to move up to the seventh floor with the rest of the executives. Tim has a plan to impress his boss Lance Fender (Bruce Greenwood) and informs everyone during a meeting that he has already spoken with Swiss billionaire Müeller (David Williams) about a business proposition involving unarmed bombs turned into lamps and Fender’s company taking over as his asset advisors.

Article Author: Cinenerd

A Utah based writer, born and raised in Salt Lake City, UT for better and worse. Cinenerd has had an obsession with film his entire life, finally able to write about them since 2009, and the only thing he loves more are his wife and their two wiener dogs (Beatrix Kiddo and Pixar Animation). …

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