Sorry Schmucks

As an avowed defender of the spazzes, schlubs and oddballs of the world I was sort of looking forward to Dinner For Schmucks --

That turned out to be a mistake.

I did not laugh once through the entire picture -- not once!

For the seven or eight people out there who don't know the premise of DFS, it's about a bunch of plutocrats who invite assorted misfits over to a monthly dinner where they can be ridiculed behind their backs. Paul Rudd plays a guy trying to get in good with his rich colleagues. Carell plays one of the eponymous "schmucks."

A movie about hunting down exotic idiots and bringing them for a mean-spirited "performance" of sorts, could have been entertaining. But you would be well advised to skip this movie -- it's a disaster. Among the movie's fatal flaws:

1) Steve Carell is not schmucky-- he's stupid.

Carrell plays Barry, the sort of nerd who's so utterly cut off from the rest of us that has no idea how creepy he comes off.

Which is fine as the underpinnings for a comic character, I guess, but Carrell wasn't particularly funny. We're supposed to find it hilarious, for instance, that Carell's prime distraction in life is something he calls his "mousterpieces" -- handmade set pieces from literature or history that Barry populates with dead mice. (Which he stuffs himself.)

Are you laughing yet?

2) The filmmakers almost seem overly worried that they're mocking Carrell.

I think the film's uncontroversial guiding philosophy is that the weirdoes of life are people, too, and should be treated as such.

OK, sure, I'll buy that.

But just because you treat someone with respect, doesn't mean that you have to be their pal. If someone is so dumb that they ruin your life (as Carell does over and over again) you're allowed to be angry and call them a jackass and not risk moral turpitude. Carell wasn't simply a sweet, feckless sort of manchild. He was utterly oblivious to how much havoc he was wreaking in Rudd's life. Rudd was well within his rights to despise him.

3) Where's the Yiddishkeit?

I feel for a movie with the word "schmucks" in the title, you need some sort of underlying Jewyness. Aside from the title, the word "schmucks" is never uttered. And none of the characters are Jewish.

I'm not saying that they needed to throw Jackie Mason into the movie, but where did this title come from if the movie is not Jewish in any form? I feel that was a form of false advertising. (There is also some question, as my old paper The Forward asked, as to whether the more proper title would be, "Dinner for Schlemiles." But I'll leave that one to the Yiddish scholars out there.)

4) The side characters are all unfunny.

Since The Hangover, I've been a fan of Zach Galifianakis but what the hell is he doing here? He plays an intense "mind control" IRS agent, who can apparently slip in and out of Barry's thoughts at will.

You have to wonder what the studio execs said at the meetings when this character was discussed.

Maybe they thought that a comedian of Galifianakis' talent could pull it off and they wouldn't have to come up with, you know, funny dialogue. Or funny situations.

This should serve as a lesson.

A fine bromance

All in all, I Love You, Man is a pretty bad movie.

This is said wearing my objective-critical-thinking-I-don't-want-to-assume-any-liabilities-for-anyone-actually-paying-to-go-see-it hat. I don't think I Love You, Man can be defended on serious aesthetic grounds.

But I admit -- I sort of liked it.

You know the story if you've seen even one of the trailers: Paul Rudd (whom I admit to having a bit of a man-crush on) is a metero guy without other guy friends. So he goes about trying to make them. Enter Jason Segel, good natured schlub. Let the bromance bloom.

The biggest problem with the movie, as my friend Noah said was that it was more cringe-inducing than laugh-inducing. (I refrained from taking the schlubette to see the movie -- this is one to be seen with another dude.)

Jon Faverau has a small role, and the thing that came to both Noah's and my mind was the scene in Swingers when he leaves the unending stream of messages on a girl's voicemail -- demolishing any chance he might have had with her in one painful, 5 minute stretch. That was a cringe-inducing scene, to be sure (heartbreaking, in its way) but it was one of only two or three cringe-worthy bits in Swingers.

I Love You, Man made you cringe for almost the entire movie. Rudd has an almost autistic quality towards other guys -- he can't figure them out and when he tries to fit in, he only stands out in his cluelessness.

In one sense, the movie does talk about something that you don't see very often -- the odd friendships between guys.

There's one scene in which Rudd goes out to dinner with a prospective friend, has a good time, and then stands there helplessly his erstwhile friend make a pass at him.

Of course, you could see this coming a mile away (you knew that there was going to be some homosexual pass made at Rudd during the course of this movie), but there was something sort of recognizable about this. It's a very weird thing making a friend. You never know quite what the other dude wants from you -- and it sometimes crosses your mind that he will make a pass at you (which, I'm happy to report, has never happened to me).

Certainly, Judd Apatow has portrayed this (more, I think, in The 40-Year Old Virgin than in Knocked Up). But there is often a strange veil that exists between friends, that does sort of have the tension of dating. The rules of friendship are often murky and unknowable. I've confided things in my guy friends that I would never tell a girlfriend -- and vice versa. In this sense, ILYM should have something relevant to say.

That never quite happened. I'm not going to say I didn't have a good time with I Love You, Man -- I'm just not sure I'd ever call again.