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Dinner for Schmucks

Mixed or average reviews
Based on 36 critic reviews
How did we calculate this?
Based on 44 votes
Read user comments
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Movie Info
Genre(s): Comedy
Written by:
Andy Borowitz, Danielle Kasen
Ken Daurio, Cinco Paul
David Guion, Francis Veber
Michael Handelman, Jon Vitti
Directed by: Jay Roach
Release Date:
Theatrical: July 30, 2010
Running Time: minutes, Color
Origin: USA
Summary
RATING: PG-13 for sequences of crude and sexual content, some partial nudity and language
Starring Steve Carell, Paul Rudd, Jemaine Clement, Jeff Dunham, Bruce Greenwood, Ron Livingston, Stephanie Szostak, Lucy Davenport, and Kristen Schaal
Dinner for Schmucks tells the story of Tim, a guy on the verge of having it all. The only thing standing between him and total career success is finding the perfect guest to bring to his boss' annual Dinner for Extraordinary People, an event where the winner of the evening brings the most eccentric character as his guest. Enter Barry, a guy with a passion for dressing mice up in tiny outfits to recreate great works of art. (Paramount for Schmucks)
Also On The Web: Internet Movie Database Official Studio Site
What The Critics Said
All critic scores are converted to a 100-point scale. If a critic does not indicate a score, we assign a score based on the general impression given by the text of the review. Learn more...
Variety Peter Debruge
An uproarious odd-couple remake of Francis Veber's hit French farce "The Dinner Game."
Read Full Review >Arizona Republic Bill Goodykoontz
It's outstanding work (Carell). It's also a really funny movie.
Read Full Review >The New York Times A.O. Scott
The film collects a cast of performers who know how to be funny. The success of this movie, following a formula upheld by just about any recent hit comedy you can name, lies as much with supporting players and plot-derailing set pieces as with the central story and characters.
Read Full Review >Philadelphia Inquirer Steven Rea
Dinner for Schmucks goes up in flames. Amusingly, perhaps - but creatively, too.
Read Full Review >USA Today Claudia Puig
Gussied-up rodents and inane male antics come together in funny and inspired ways in this screwball farce.
Read Full Review >San Francisco Chronicle Mick LaSalle
Dinner for Schmucks is lumbering, inconsistent and about 20 minutes too long, but it's funny. It's funny from the beginning, and it stays funny, even as it beats scenes to death and overstays its welcome.
Read Full Review >Chicago Sun-Times Roger Ebert
The guests at the dinner are a strange lot. To describe them would be to give away their jokes, and one of the pleasures of the movie is having each one appear.
Read Full Review >Orlando Sentinel Roger Moore
The situations are painstakingly set up and downright painful to sit through. So enjoy, or endure the appetizers, because with this Dinner, dessert is truly the topper.
Read Full Review >The Hollywood Reporter John DeFore
Though Carell and Rudd are both saddled with characters that just aren't as interesting as many they've played in the past, the movie benefits from having drawn many gifted comedians to supporting roles.
Read Full Review >Salon.com Andrew O'Hehir
Carell's performance as Barry, is nothing short of magnificent.
Read Full Review >Time Richard Corliss
On the way to this predictable conclusion, the movie offers plenty of smart entertainment. You'd be a schmuck to miss it.
Read Full Review >New York Daily News Joe Neumaier
While the climactic dinner is a bit too much like a circus audition, Roach -- who helmed the "Austin Powers" movies as well as "Meet the Parents" and "Meet the Fockers" -- knows how to enjoy each sideshow.
Read Full Review >St. Petersburg Times Steve Persall
Steve Carell's character in Dinner for Schmucks is almost too pitiful for the jokes launched against him to be funny. It is a terrific performance making everyone else's condescension sound harsher than the writers likely intended.
Read Full Review >The Onion (A.V. Club) Genevieve Koski
Thanks to Rudd and Carell’s dependable likeability and a tacked-on warm-and-fuzzy ending, Dinner For Schmucks is leagues ahead of its forebear in terms of mass appeal, but its laughs are more silly than scathing.
Read Full Review >Movieline Stephanie Zacharek
The problem isn’t just that the gags feel airless and pointless; it’s that the performers -- many of whom have done wonderful work in other settings -- seem more bent on pleasing each other than on entertaining us.
Read Full Review >New Orleans Times-Picayune Mike Scott
It's probably best not to think very hard about any of it -- just dummy up and laugh along.
Read Full Review >Washington Post Ann Hornaday
Dinner for Schmucks has already raised hackles in the Yiddish-speaking community for the breathtakingly offensive epithet in its title (and it's not "dinner"). But it turns out that this comedy of humiliation, starring Paul Rudd and Steve Carell, isn't nearly as off-putting as it might have been.
Read Full Review >Boston Globe Ty Burr
Far from a classic of precision farce, but it’s funnier than the trailers make it seem.
Read Full Review >Rolling Stone Peter Travers
When Hollywood decides to remake French farce by Francis Veber, the result can be a champagne cocktail (La Cage Aux Folles spawning The Birdcage) or pâté de merde (Les Compères degenerating into Father's Day). Dinner for Schmucks, adapted from Veber's Le Dîner De Cons, falls somewhere in the middle.
Read Full Review >ReelViews James Berardinelli
The film is sporadically amusing but gives the impression it should be generating more laughs than it does.
Read Full Review >Boxoffice Magazine Sara Maria Vizcarrondo
In sum, the film is not without its sweetness. Carell's Barry retells the story of his life in dioramas populated completely with costumed, stuffed mice.
Read Full Review >Village Voice Dan Kois
Paramount Pictures and director Jay Roach would like to invite you to a dinner they're hosting, at which you are welcome to laugh at these poor jerks. That's a little messed up.
Read Full Review >Entertainment Weekly Lisa Schwarzbaum
No schmucks were harmed in the making of Dinner for Schmucks. That's the problem.
Read Full Review >Miami Herald Rene Rodriguez
The hands-down funniest elements in Dinner for Schmucks turn out to be the mice dioramas, which become increasingly clever - even touching - as the film unfolds, then laugh-out-loud hilarious over the end credits. But you know you're in trouble when the best thing in your movie is a bunch of dead rodents.
Read Full Review >Portland Oregonian Shawn Levy
With Paul Rudd as the would-be mocker and Steve Carell as the mockee, and all manner of new supporting characters and plot lines thrown in, and much less energy, delight, wit, humor and fun than the original was able to muster without any evident strain. There’s the occasional bubble, I confess, but almost no delight.
Read Full Review >Slate Tom Shone
This tawdry freak show is a telling substitution for the actual stupidity mocked in Veber's original. Roach's remake manages both mean-spiritedness and timidity the same time. That's some feat--moviemaking for boneheads.
Read Full Review >The Globe and Mail (Toronto) Liam Lacey
There’s plenty here to keep summer comedy fans satiated, if not entirely satisfied.
Read Full Review >St. Louis Post-Dispatch Joe Williams
Its mean-spiritedness, stupidity and squandering of talent is uniquely Hollywood.
Read Full Review >Christian Science Monitor Peter Rainer
The characters who come off best in Dinner for Schmucks are those dead mice.
Read Full Review >Austin Chronicle Marc Savlov
There are inspired gags, to be sure, but they're few and far between.
Read Full Review >Los Angeles Times Kenneth Turan
Against all reason and expectation, the result is a distinctly unfunny film.
Read Full Review >Chicago Reader J.R. Jones
A perfect example of the modern comedy mill gone wrong, a prolonged muddle whose plot, specific situations, and improvised quips never line up.
Read Full Review >Time Out New York Aaron Hillis
The Americanized version reconfigures the plot as both a hazing ritual for corporate-ladder-climbers and a lazy hook to hang cheap jokes on.
Read Full Review >Chicago Tribune Michael Phillips
A remake for schlemiels, or at least easy marks when it comes to formulaic Hollywood comedy. But the film's peculiar sluggishness and nagging hypocrisy probably won't get in the way of its popularity.
Read Full Review >What Our Users Said
The average user rating for this movie is 6.7 (out of 10) based on 44 User Votes
Note: User votes are NOT included in the Metascore calculation.
Chad S gave it a6:
Nobody likes to see a good person being treated like a schmuck. In Nancy Savoca's "Dogfight", the waitress is the schmuck, a shy woman, treated so by a marine, a coffee shop customer she follows to a bar, where Rose(Lili Taylor) unwittingly enters an anti-beauty contest, a pageant no woman ever dreams of winning. The IRS agent is the schmuck; the IRS agent-cum-taxidermist in "Dinner for Schmucks", who gets invited to a schmuck-fight by an up-and-coming businessman; a schmuck-fight that should make the moviegoer cringe, but doesn't. While it would be wrong to equate mice with Chinese dissidents, the same ethical questions come into play surrounding Barry's artwork, the same questions that plague the people responsible for Bodies...The Exhibiition. Lost in the artistry of the taxidermist's furry installations is that little matter concerning taste: Is it in bad taste to engage the dead with an aesthetic eye? And are Barry's tableaus, murder tableaus? When Tim(Paul Rudd) first bumps, literally bumps into Barry(Steve Carrell), the automobilist interrupts the mouse artist's process of obtaining his next carcass; a found object, presumably, cause of death unknown. "Dinner for Schmucks" never answers the question as to how Barry collects his subjects. Imagine the same installations, but with kittens, or puppies, then you get the idea. Contrary to Francis Veber's "Le diner de cons", in which the French schmuck is wholly sympathetic(no animals are harmed; he works with matchsticks), and schmuck's friend, undoubtedly a lout, who preys on the social misfit, this American retelling blurs the protagonist/antagonist binary(Rudd plays Barry with a dose of humanity). If Barry's rodents perished via means of corporal punishment, maybe there's a self-awareness to the taxidermist's naivety, the hustled playing the hustler, which lends a considerable edge to the farcical misunderstandings that temporarily dismantles Tim's personal and business relations. After all, Barry is a taxman with the power to audit; he can destroy Tim's life on purpose. The mice are adorable, but like the bodies in the controversial art exhibit that continues to tour the world, the dead rodents and human beings respectively, are victims of degradation; post-mortally humiliated by aesthetes. "Dinner for Schmucks" is more ambiguous than most mainstream comedies, because its not abundantly clear who the real schmuck is. How good can a taxman be?
Jendo S gave it a10:
One of the funniest movies of all time. Only a few movies can make me tear, and this is one of them.
Jennifer C gave it a0:
Horrible, un-funny movie. Painful to watch. Left early and got my money back. I was very disappointed. I expected a lot more out of such an amazing group of comedians.
M W gave it a7:
Like Murder by Death, and though the laughs come from a different source, not a bad film. A rental, though. Not necessary to see on a big screen.
Jeff S. gave it a4:
I was honestly disappointed upon seeing this movie, especially after some hype due to its respectable metascore. I'm a fan of Steve Carrell and have enjoyed almost everything he's put out in recent years. However, I felt this movie was just too over the top at times, even for a comedy. Such scenes just took away from the film and left the audience with forced laughs. This movie did have sincere laughs in it and was still enjoyable. The most troubling fact is that the movie had the potential to be so much better had it invested more in down to Earth humor instead of the over the top fiasco the audience is led through for close to an hour.
Charlie gave it a10:
There was really none stop comedy. Steve was great!
John S gave it a9:
I found this movie to be entertaining and have a balanced mix of humor, tension and tender moments. I believe the best way to view this movie is to set yourself into a frame of mind where you want to laugh and don’t hold back when you do. Be ready for a wild ride.
