Dinner for Schmucks

Impressions before seeing it
The commercials looked like weird, wacky fun, but then I didn't hear much about it, so as much as I wanted to see it there was also a part of me that was slightly worried it would be bad. I am a big fan of Steve Carell, but his movie career can be hit and miss.

How was it?
Dinner for Schmucks is one of those movies where a new person comes into someone's life and then unintentionally proceeds to ruin it. If that's too much pain and awkwardness for you, you may want to skip this one, though it does have a happy ending. From the footage I'd seen, I actually thought the dinner in the title would take up most of the movie, but it doesn't come until near the end. The first chunk is spent building Tim (Rudd) and Barry's (Carell) relationship and its disastrous effect on the former's life, which ultimately is necessary for the film's climax when Tim takes pity on Barry, a well-meaning but lonely and pathetic man. Not all of the jokes work - and there are some that go on too long, such as a sequence where Tim hurts his back and is trying to crawl across his apartment for a back brace - but there are several hilarious parts, so I was satisfied. After years of practice on The Office, Steve Carell is really good at playing dumb/gullible, and it was really cool to see some international TV funnymen lend a few laughs as well: Little Britain's David Walliams, Flight of the Conchords' Jemaine Clement, and The IT Crowd's Chris O'Dowd.

I also have to mention that I love the mouse dioramas that Barry makes. I am a sucker for miniature models and replicas, and I had already seen Carell's appearance on The Late Show where he presented an awesome diorama of the talk show set, complete with a Letterman mouse conversationally waving a little pencil. Then I watched the movie to discover they play a fairly large role, such as a scene where a series of diorama photos tell the story of Barry and his wife - which, thanks to an impressive amount of detail and expression in the mice, wound up being kind of moving. So to me, those alone were worth the Blu-ray purchase. There's a featurette about how they were built, too. Yay!

Recommendation
I think I pretty much laid out all of the things you may or may not like about this movie, so it's up to you. Personally I really enjoyed it and was relieved not to have another Date Night on my shelf.