'Dinner' missing key ingredients, like laughs

As a person who one day hopes to be an important cog in the creative film-making machinery, I have to envy the guys who got to put together “Dinner for Schmucks.” I’d imagine sometime early on in the preproduction process there was a conversation like this:

“Wait, this movie is about putting a bunch of really stupid people together in a room to have dinner? It’s like ‘Dumb and Dumber’ times 10!”

“Yes, we really have the opportunity laid out in front of us to make a great comedy. Let’s put a lot of effort into it so it can reach its full potential.”

“Why bother? Steve Carell and that bearded guy from ‘The Hangover’ are in it. There’s no way it won’t be funny. If we just slap it together real quick we can be in St. Bart’s for an extra two months.”

“What was I thinking? Pass the cocaine, please!”

The sad thing is, the fake people in this fake situation are kind of right.

As much as the film falls short of expectations, it’s still pretty funny. It can’t help it with the lineup of talent it possesses, all of whom are cast perfectly.

Carell plays a dimwit with a penchant for mouse taxidermy and a complete lack of understanding for social cues. Paul Rudd is the perfect “dude that everyone can relate to,” and Zach Galifianakis gets to be bizarre and creepily serious, which fans of his stand-up know always breeds hilarity.

Jemaine Clement provides some of the film’s best moments, playing an artist obsessed with his own “animal sexuality,” an obvious ripoff of Aldous Snow.
Clement’s character embodies “Schmucks” as a whole: talented comedians combined with lazy writing and directing.

As often as I laughed out loud during this film, there were twice as many jokes I didn’t even smile at, the zeal of their delivery making me squirm uncomfortably as though I was watching a stand-up comedian bomb in front of a silent crowd. Great comedy is reliant on perfect timing and the right tone, and too often “Schmucks” lacks both.
More than anything, it was “Schmucks”’ irritating do-gooder message that kept it from being a stand-out comedy.

I don’t ask for a lot from comedy plots. I don’t have to be compelled by drama to enjoy it.. But if you’re going to inject morality into your script, don’t beat me over the head with it until I’m too annoyed to laugh.

The driving conflict of “Schmucks” basically boils down to whether Rudd’s character can make fun of stupid people to impress his boss for a promotion.
Don’t be mean! Don’t laugh at others!

This is a perfectly fine message — unless you’re making a comedy movie that is 100 percent predicated on your audience laughing at stupid people.

Ninety minutes of improv would have been better than picking some generic, sappy conflict and throwing it into the “insert plot here” gap, thus creating a movie that ended up calling me a jerk for laughing when it told me to laugh.

It’s almost as lazy as this callous, ranting review.