Dinner for Schmucks (2010)
★★★ — Dinner for Schmucks (2010)
Dinner for Schmucks is a Hollywood remake of Francis Veber's 1998 French farce Le Dîner de Cons, transplanted to a corporate American setting with a $69 million budget behind it. Director Jay Roach was by this point best known for the Austin Powers trilogy and the Meet the Parents films, making broad, high-concept studio comedy very much his established territory. Paul Rudd and Steve Carell were both riding comfortable commercial form in 2010, the latter fresh off a string of Apatow-adjacent hits. The film was produced through Walter Parkes and Laurie MacDonald's company alongside Roach's own Everyman Pictures, and released through Paramount. It performed modestly at the box office, earning just over $86 million worldwide against its substantial budget.
Dinner with Schmucks (2010) is exactly what you’d expect from a Hollywood studio comedy: formulaic, over-the-top, and packed with the kind of broad, slapstick humor that either lands or falls flat depending on your mood. Loosely based on the French film *Le Dîner de Cons*, it follows ambitious exec Tim (Paul Rudd) as he’s forced to bring an eccentric “idiot” (Steve Carell’s Barry) to his boss’s annual dinner where guests showcase their weirdest acquaintances. What follows is a series of increasingly absurd set pieces, bizarre taxidermy displays, and painfully awkward social encounters. And yet (against all odds) it’s at times genuinely funny. The first scene where Barry meets Therman, is hilarious. That said, the story drags badly in the second act, overstuffed with subplots and repetitive gags. At nearly two hours, it’s at least 30 minutes too long, and the emotional beats feel tacked on rather than earned. Still, it’s slightly better than average for this genre, thanks almost entirely to Carell’s fearless performance and a few inspired moments of surreal comedy. Silly, uneven, and forgettable in parts, but with enough laughs to justify the watch. Not high art, but sometimes, you just need turn your brain off cinema.
Rating: ★★★ | Year: 2010 | Watched: 2026-02-17
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Related on Movies With Macca
More from Jay Roach: Meet the Fockers (2004) · Meet the Parents (2000)
More with Paul Rudd: Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy (2004) · Knocked Up (2007)
More from the 2010s: Wonder (2017) · Beautiful Boy (2018) · The Witch (2015) · What We Do in the Shadows (2014)
More comedy: The Eagle (1925) · The General (1926) · Americana (2023) · The Naked Gun: From the Files of Police Squad! (1988)
