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Tim (Rudd) is a rising executive who “succeeds†in finding the perfect guest, IRS employee Barry (Carell), for his boss’ monthly event, a so-called “dinner for idiots,†which offers certain advantages to the exec who shows up with the biggest buffoon.Steve Carell, whose gift for playing dumb yet remaining sympathetic is unparalleled, and the astoundingly likable Paul Rudd make an excellent comedy team in
Dinner for Schmucks. Tim (Rudd,
I Love You, Man) gets invited to take part in a game his boss plays every year: each of his executives has to bring a perfect idiot to dinner; the biggest loser wins an award and the executive who brought him gets a promotion. Tim's girlfriend thinks the idea is appalling, and Tim reluctantly agrees--until he literally runs into Barry ! (Carell), an obtuse IRS agent who makes dioramas with stuffed dead mice. Barry is so perfect for the game that Tim can't resist inviting him to dinner--but by inviting Barry into his life, Tim loses control of everything he wants as Barry's bumbling attempts to help go hopelessly awry.
Dinner for Schmucks has its share of broad slapstick, but what may surprise some viewers is the mix of verbal wit and elegant visual jokes (some of Barry's dioramas are both funny and truly beautiful). The movie's farcical formula is familiar and threadbare, but Rudd and Carell give it genuine heart as well as humor and the supporting performances from Jemaine Clement (
Eagle vs. Shark), Zach Galifianakis (
The Hangover), and Kristin Schaal (
Flight of the Conchords) are all deliriously funny. A loose but honorable remake of the French comedy
The Dinner Game.
--Bret FetzerTim (Rudd) is a rising executive who “succeeds†in finding the perfect guest, I! RS employee Barry (Carell), for his boss’ monthly event, a s! o-called “dinner for idiots,†which offers certain advantages to the exec who shows up with the biggest buffoon.Steve Carell, whose gift for playing dumb yet remaining sympathetic is unparalleled, and the astoundingly likable Paul Rudd make an excellent comedy team in
Dinner for Schmucks. Tim (Rudd,
I Love You, Man) gets invited to take part in a game his boss plays every year: each of his executives has to bring a perfect idiot to dinner; the biggest loser wins an award and the executive who brought him gets a promotion. Tim's girlfriend thinks the idea is appalling, and Tim reluctantly agrees--until he literally runs into Barry (Carell), an obtuse IRS agent who makes dioramas with stuffed dead mice. Barry is so perfect for the game that Tim can't resist inviting him to dinner--but by inviting Barry into his life, Tim loses control of everything he wants as Barry's bumbling attempts to help go hopelessly awry.
Dinner for Schmucks has its share of broad slap! stick, but what may surprise some viewers is the mix of verbal wit and elegant visual jokes (some of Barry's dioramas are both funny and truly beautiful). The movie's farcical formula is familiar and threadbare, but Rudd and Carell give it genuine heart as well as humor and the supporting performances from Jemaine Clement (
Eagle vs. Shark), Zach Galifianakis (
The Hangover), and Kristin Schaal (
Flight of the Conchords) are all deliriously funny. A loose but honorable remake of the French comedy
The Dinner Game.
--Bret FetzerTim, is an up-and-coming executive who has just received his first invitation to the "dinner for idiots," a monthly event hosted by his boss that promises bragging rights to the exec that shows up with the biggest buffoon. Tim's fiancee, Julie, finds it distasteful and Tim agrees to skip the dinner, until he bumps into Barry--an IRS employee who devotes his spare time to building elaborate taxidermy mouse dioramas--and q! uickly realizes he's struck idiot gold. Tim can't resist, and ! invites Barry, whose blundering good intentions soon sends Tim's life into a frenzied downward spiral and a series of misadventures, threatening a major business deal, bringing crazy stalker ex-girlfriend, Darla, back into Tim's life and driving Julie into the arms of another man.
From The Hangover director Todd Phillips,
Due Date throws two unlikely companions together on a road trip that turns out to be as life-changing as it is outrageous. Expectant first-time father Peter Highman (Robert Downey Jr.) looks forward to his new child’s due date five days away. As Peter hurries to catch a flight home from Atlanta to be at his wife’s side for the birth, his best intentions go completely awry when an encounter with aspiring actor Ethan Tremblay (Zach Galifianakis) forces Peter to hitch a ride with Ethan on a cross-country trip that will ultimately destroy several cars, many friendships and Peter’s last nerve.Misfit NYPD detectives Gamble and Hoi! tz (Will Ferrell and Mark Wahlberg) are sentenced to life behind the desk. They hate each other and the monotony of their meaningless jobs, as they’re forced to live in the shadow of the two biggest and most badass cops on the force (Samuel L. Jackson and Dwayne Johnson). But when those guys go down for the count, opportunity knocks for Gamble and Hoitz. Stumbling onto what could be one of the biggest crimes in years, can The Other Guys step up their game to solve the case without killing each other and destroying NYC in the process? From the director of
Step Brothers and
Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby.Although the comedy team of Will Ferrell and Mark Wahlberg does not sound like a threat to Laurel and Hardy or Abbott and Costello, they conjure up consistent laughs in
The Other Guys, yet another comedy from
Talladega Nights director Adam McKay. Ferrell plays a mild-mannered police accountant partnered with Wahlberg's hothead (recen! tly demoted to desk-jockey duty after shooting a very famous Y! ankee pl ayer during the World Series), and both men must endure the showboating fame of a pair of supercops (Samuel L. Jackson and Dwayne Johnson) in their New York City precinct house. Along with sending up cop-movie clichés, the movie basically exists to give Ferrell and Wahlberg room to work amusing variations on their characters (with grace notes for Michael Keaton's stereotypical tough captain, too). The loosey-goosey structure works especially well when Wahlberg is needling his partner's squareness or marveling, in wonderfully awestruck tones, at the unbelievable hot-i-tude of Ferrell's wife (Eva Mendes)--a discrepancy made all the more maddening because Ferrell seems indifferent to her charms. Throw in a plot about a billionaire Wall Street crook (Steve Coogan) and the revelation of Ferrell's hilariously dark past, and the movie finds a nice zone of silliness. Of course, any Will Ferrell vehicle must be judged by the opportunities for the star to launch into some borderline-! surreal riff--and happily, this film comes through. From the moment Ferrell begins deconstructing Wahlberg's lion versus tuna metaphor,
The Other Guys manages to find time for such nonsense, and the film--the world in general, for that matter--is the better for it.
--Robert HortonIn this charming, critically acclaimed tale of rumors and reputation, Olive (Emma Stone), an average high school student, sees her below-the-radar existence turn around overnight once she decides to use the school's gossip grapevine to advance her social standing. Now her classmates (Amanda Bynes, Aly Michalka) are turning against her and the school board is becoming concerned, including her favorite teacher (Thomas Haden Church) and the distracted guidance counselor (Lisa Kudrow). With the support of her hilariously idiosyncratic parents (Stanley Tucci, Patricia Clarkson) and a little help from a long-time crush (Penn Badgley), Olive attempts to take on her notorious new identity and! crush the rumor mill once and for all.
Easy A is a fr! othy, fi zzy, and
funny romantic comedy for teens--and adults will love it too. Not since
Clueless has a high-school heroine been able to delight both audiences, and
Easy A's Olive (the sparkling Emma Stone) is a stellar young star. But
Easy A benefits from a great script by writer Bert V. Royal and assured direction by TV veteran Will Gluck. Olive is a smart girl happy to stay in the shadows of high school, until her good friend, Brandon (Dan Byrd), who's gay, begs her to pretend to have sex with him so the rest of the school will stop picking on him. She obliges, but soon she picks up not one but two reputations--as the girl who sleeps around, and, on the down-low, as the girl who'll
pretend to sleep with a guy so he won't be branded a virgin. Soon
Easy A's complications pile up higher than the entrance of Olive's high school, and her two story lines, neither of which reflects the real Olive, take on lives of their own. There are backlashes! and blacklists and repercussions galore. "I always thought
pretending to lose my virginity would feel a little more special," muses Olive. "Judy Blume should have prepared me for that." Stone is accompanied by a strong supporting cast: Stanley Tucci and Patricia Clarkson as her bemused parents,
Gossip Girl's dreamy Penn Badgley, the freshly unretired Amanda Bynes, Thomas Haden Church, Lisa Kudrow, and Malcolm McDowell. And it's to the cast's and the writer's credit that the audience is kept engaged, and guessing, till the very end.
Easy A should be awarded exactly that. --
A.T. HurleySteve Carell and Tina Fey are “a match made in comedy heaven†(Ben Lyons, E!) in this uproarious adventure about an ordinary couple in the right place...on the wrong night. Phil and Claire Foster are a sensible, suburban husband and wife slogging through their daily lives and marriage. But a case of mistaken identity sets off a n outrageous chain of events involv! ing small-time thieves, big-city mobsters, corrupt cops and a ! crazed c abbie, as the Fosters’ “date night†turns into a wild ride they’ll never forget! Tina Fey and Steve Carell are two of the most charming performers in entertainment today. Their goofy attractiveness makes them a perfect couple in
Date Night: an unremarkable husband and wife from New Jersey, they get mistaken for crooks in Manhattan, sending them on a wild night replete with snooty wait staff, crooked cops, glitter-specked strippers, a shirtless superspy (Mark Wahlberg, as buff as ever), and a preposterous car chase. The movie makes no effort to be remotely plausible and the last third really goes off the rails, and it would probably be better served by less familiar faces in minor roles (bit parts are played by Mark Ruffalo, Kristen Wiig, Common, James Franco, Mila Kunis, William Fichtner, and Ray Liotta). It's disappointing that the dialogue doesn't crackle the way it does on
30 Rock or
The Office. But Fey and Carell carry the movie along through! sheer nerdy pluck. Rarely does a couple in a movie seem genuinely devoted to each other, not out of wild passion, but for all the things that a real marriage is built on: patience, shared humor, a willingness to deal with day-to-day annoyances, and simple affection. Fey and Carell seem like a couple you'd actually enjoy going out to dinner with. In today's world, that's more romantic than sunsets and bouquets of roses.
--Bret FetzerA record company intern is hired to accompany out-of-control british rock star aldous snow to a concert at l.A.s greek theater. Studio: Uni Dist Corp. (mca) Release Date: 09/28/2010 Starring: Jonah Hill Sean Combs Run time: 109 minutes Rating: R Director: Nicholas Stoller
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