Dinner For Schmucks

Bomb Rating: 

While it was amusing of you to completely waste the talent of Zach Galifianakis by restricting him to the role of a cape-wearing IRS employee, the idea that somehow a pet medium, a blind fencing expert and a national mustache champion are the cream of the weirdo crop was a bit of a let-down.

Dear Mr. Roach: It has come to out attention that your final film school project, "Dinner For Schmucks," has been submitted for our approval. It is with great sadness that we are unable to give you a passing grade for this lamentable, half, hearted stab at a comedy. Unlike your previous, Oscar-caliber work in "Mystery, Alaska" and "Meet the Parents," this most recent effort just doesn’t make the grade. We have broken down our feelings on the matter via the following report card:

The Plot: D. While the idea of a man who must bring a total retard to a dinner for retards where richer retards make fun of them in order to gain a promotion might have seemed like a good one on paper, by the film’s fifth hour the viewer is left wondering whether you will ever actually gets us to the night in question, or whether you will continue your in-depth and heartfelt examination of the friendship developing between a soulless corporate drone and a man obsessed with miniature taxidermy.

Paul Rudd: F. You do realize that without an actual character to inhabit, Mr. Rudd automatically defaults to a smug cipher whose entire emotional repertoire consists of making faces at the camera and acting aloof. Failing to provide Mr. Rudd with said character reduced his performance to sad pantomime of what Christian Slater could have eventually accomplished with his career if he had not loved the bottle more than life itself.

Steve Carell: C-. Watching Carell trying to improvise his way through the film’s genuinely heartless script is sort of like trying to watch your mom’s new boyfriend try to apologize for you having seen his penis that afternoon you came home from school just a bit too early. So earnest, so sincere, and sporting a huge erection that just ruins everything about your life from that point forward.

The Dinner for Schmucks Itself: F. While it was amusing of you to completely waste the talent of Zach Galifianakis by restricting him to the role of a cape-wearing IRS employee, the idea that somehow a pet medium, a blind fencing expert and a national mustache champion are the cream of the weirdo crop was a bit of a let-down. Around here, we call that Wednesday evening at the Y.

Mouse Taxidermy: A+. Never before have any of us at the school seen such a touching representation of one of the world’s most misunderstood serial killer pastimes.

Mr. Roach, while we do not feel that you are well suited to direct any future films – and indeed, are currently in the process of filing a restraining order in order to keep you away from any of our cameras for the foreseeable future – we do feel that you have a lot to offer the medical research establishment. With a full set of human organs – eyes, kidneys, liver, etc – you should be able to scrape together enough money to eventually pay for a respectable funeral and avoid being a burden to the state for the rest of your adult life. Dismissed.

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