“Dinner for Schmucks” Dinner with Redemption
Aug 4th
“Dinner with Redemption”
DINNER FOR SCHMUCKS is a comedy that takes a long time getting to the laughs, and once it does, they are mean-spirited laughs and all at the expense of others.
Steve Carell plays Barry, a meek little man whose hobby is constructing elaborate dioramas that use dead mice dressed up as people in them.
Paul Rudd plays Tim, an analyst on the sixth floor of an investment firm who wants the office of a colleague who just got fired.
In other words, Tim wants a promotion to the top floor, and he gets an opportunity when he comes up with an idea to land a new client for their company who has $100 million to invest.
So, Tim’s boss invites Tim to a dinner party he hosts once a month called “Dinner for Winners,” and the next one is this Saturday. Each person brings a guest who has a skill or talent of some kind, everyone makes fun of them, the winner gets a trophy, and they all are released into the world no more the wiser.
Tim has doubts about this cruelty, and his girlfriend, Julie, doesn’t want him to attend, but then Tim meets Barry, who is a tornado of destruction and makes Tim’s personal life much worse.
Barry has an odd way of thinking, and as he tells Tim, “In the words of John Lennon, ‘You may say I’m a dreamer, but I’m not.'”
Tim can’t convince Barry that he is leaving off three words at the end, but no matter. Barry doesn’t listen well to others.
You can see the gags coming ahead of time, but you will still laugh, mostly in spite of yourself, and there are two subplots that add to the gags at the dinner party, one involving a woman who has been stalking Tim for three years and the other involving Julie’s relationship with a self-absorbed artist.
The movie wants us to feed sad and sorry for Barry, but we can’t. Also, you might be getting tired of Carell playing an idiot, but he does it so well, doesn’t he?
And as much as you might want to hate this movie for its premise, remember that it is based on a French film, the 1998 THE DINNER GAME.
DINNER FOR SCHMUCKS to its credit, however, redeems itself at the end.
I’m Dan Culberson and this is “Hotshots.”
Dinner for Schmucks – Movie Trailer
Jul 30th
An ambitious executive accepts an invitation from his boss to attend a dinner party where high-powered professionals make fun of unsuspecting dimwits in this remake of Francis Veber’s 1998 comedy The Dinner Game. Upwardly mobile executive Tim (Paul Rudd) has just landed his company an extremely wealthy Swiss client when his boss, Lance (Bruce Greenwood), invites him to an exclusive, yet unusually mean-spirited dinner party where each of the high-powered executives brings a guest to make fun of. Recognizing that his long-awaited promotion is finally within reach, Tim begins to have second thoughts about participating in the elaborate charade when his longtime girlfriend, Julie (Stephanie Szostak), the successful curator at a local art gallery, voices intense disdain for the idea. The following day, Tim is looking for a way out of the dinner when fate throws the perfect guest right in front of his luxury car. Barry (Steve Carell) is a sweet but dim-witted IRS agent with an unusual hobby: he creates elaborate dioramas featuring stuffed mice. His latest project is “The Last Supper,” and he’s just put the finishing touches on a tiny mouse Jesus to set at the center of the table. Tim knows that Barry is his ticket to a big corner office on the seventh floor, but the closer the party looms, the more he realizes that his bumbling new acquaintance isn’t just an idiot, but also is a magnet for chaos.
“The Kids Are All Right” Joy Is in the Journey
Jul 29th
“Joy Is in the Journey”
“Hotshots” looks at a movie!
THE KIDS ARE ALL RIGHT is a 2010 comedy about an unconventional family and not to be confused with the 1979 documentary about the rock band The Who, which has a different spelling in its title anyway.
This very good and laugh-out-loud film stars Julianne Moore as Jules, Annette Bening as Nic, and Mark Ruffalo as Paul, and their growing relationships with each other get very complicated, to say the least.
You see, Jules and Nic are lesbians who have been happy together for a very long time. In fact, more than 18 years ago they decided to have a family, and they bought sperm from a sperm bank, with which one of them conceived and gave birth to a daughter and the other gave birth to a son, both from the same sperm donor.
Nic is a doctor and is the more–shall we say–“organized” one in the family, and she keeps pressuring the daughter, Joni, who is 18 and recently finished high school, to write her thank-you notes.
Jules is the free spirit in the family, has recently started her own landscape-design business, and as Nic tells her, “If it was up to you, our kids wouldn’t even write thank-you notes.”
Their son, Laser, is 15, and he convinces his sister Joni to contact the sperm bank and track down their biological father, who is Paul, who donated his sperm between 1991 and 1993 when he was 19.
Paul has an organic co-op farm and a restaurant, and he agrees to meet with Joni and Laser. Afterwards, Joni tells Laser that she thinks that Paul is weird, just because he donated sperm, but as Paul later explains, he donated sperm because he thought it would be more fun than donating blood.
The kids tell their moms about meeting Paul, and Nic insists that they aren’t to see him again until she and Jules meet him.
Paul is invited to dinner at their house so that they all can become acquainted, the women recognize their kids’ facial expressions in Paul’s own expressions, but then what was already a complicated relationship becomes even more complicated when Paul hires Jules to landscape the backyard of his house.
THE KIDS ARE ALL RIGHT is a wonderful film, and its joy lies more in the journey than in its destination.
I’m Dan Culberson and this is “Hotshots.”
