HOLLYWOOD, Calif. — From the director of Meet the Parents and Meet the Fockers, Jay Roach, comes the motion picture re-teaming of Steve Carell and Paul Rudd in a screen comedy inspired by an offbeat tale from French comic genius Francis Veber: Dinner for Schmucks.
Tim Conrad (Rudd) is dangerously close to having it all. He’s a bright and good-looking guy, on the verge of asking his beautiful, long-time girlfriend, Julie (Stephanie Szostak), to accept an upgrade to fiancée. An underling financial analyst at a private equity firm, Fender Financial, his business acumen has been noticed by the head of the company, Lance Fender (Bruce Greenwood), who’s about ready to kick Tim upstairs…but first, he’s got to attend the upcoming monthly dinner at Fender’s imposing mansion.
Easy—what’s a little dinner with the other company bigwigs?
Well, it’s not so much the meal that will determine his career trajectory—it’s his choice of dinner guest.
Turns out, Fender and friends gather to dine and bask in the company of extraordinary people—those charmed individuals who are born thinking ‘outside of the box.’ These men and women dwell on the fringes of society, placed there as a result of their uniqueness.
In short, Fender asks each colleague to bring an idiot to dinner.
At first, Conrad’s conscience kicks in—“that’s messed up,” he scoffs. But just as he’s about to bag the whole banquet…providence. A gift from heaven.
It’s really only IRS employee Barry Speck (Carell), who steps in front of Tim’s sports car…and gets hit—an amateur taxidermist, Barry gives dead mice a second life, by using his taxidermy skills on them and dressing them in tiny human outfits, and finally placing them in miniature scenarios, based on works of art, milestones of history or even his life, as he would wish it. He calls them (what else?) his “mouse-terpieces.”
Tim cannot resist such a specimen as Barry (goodbye, conscience!), and he winds up inviting him to join the roster of Fender’s dinner party guests. But Barry, on the other hand, sees Tim as more than the driver of the vehicle that could have killed him, he considers him his new best friend, and soon, the drone accountant’s bumbling good intentions set off a tornado of destruction in Tim’s near-perfect life—torpedoing a multi-million dollar deal and Tim’s romance with Julie all in less than 24 hours. Thanks to Barry, Tim’s bright and promising future is rendered a dismal and painful present.
Okay, but, tabling all of that for the moment…is dinner still on?
Also joining Carell, Rudd, Greenwood and Szostak in the Dinner for Schmucks shenanigans are: Jemaine Clement (half of the team in HBO’s hit The Flight of the Conchords) as acclaimed artist Kieran Vollard, Julie’s big client, who also happens to be big on Julie; comedian/ventriloquist Jeff Dunham as another dinner guest (with slutty wife, Diane) who gives Barry a run for his money; and Ron Livingston as Caldwell, an account manager shark circling Tim in the tank of Fender Financial.
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