Dinner for Schmucks/Dinner with Schmucks (2010) - Carell carries Roach's flawed but utterly hilarious comedy

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1 Film Excess nomination:

Best Supporting Actor: Zach Galifianakis (lost to John C. Reilly for The Extra Man)
 
+ Best Remake of the Year

Paul Rudd and Steve Carell's lovable funny-faces are competing to sell you Jay Roach's Dinner for Schmucks

Paul Rudd (Ant-Man (2015)) is the sweet, ambitious boyfriend (d'uh!), whose career is on the move and who has to present an utterly foolish person at a strange dinner party to his boss (Bruce Greenwood (Flight (2012))) in order to advance.

Dinner opens weakly, because the premise with the girlfriend (Stephanie Szostack (R.I.P.D. (2013)) is utterly without logic or charm (besides being completely predictable), and because Steve Carell (Hope Springs (2012)) carries the film, (and he isn't there yet.)
Later, Kristen Schaal (The Last Man on Earth (2015), TV-series) is funny in a few scenes, Zack Galifianakis (Muppets Most Wanted (2014)) is priceless as a mind-reading tax collector, and New Zealander Jemaine Clement (What We Do in the Shadows (2014)) and Brit David Walliams (Marmaduke (2010)) are also both good fun. The kooky idiot escapades culminate in the hysterically funny dinner, an eruption of crazy-comedy anarchy that somehow ricocheted right into my laugh-center.
The mouse props (!) play way too big a part of the film, and its structure is also an awful mess, but Carell (and Rudd, too) deliver so many laughs that Schmucks, despite everything, remains completely lovable.
Dinner for Schmucks is written by David Guion  and Michael Handelman (Night at the Museum: Secret of the Tomb (2014), both), remaking the French hit comedy Le Dîner de Cons/The Dinner Game (1998), and directed by great New Mexico-born filmmaker Jay Roach (Trumbo (2015)).

Related posts:

2010 in films and TV-series - according to Film Excess [UPDATED III]
2010 in films and TV-series - according to Film Excess [UPDATED II]
2010 in films and TV-series - according to Film Excess [UPDATED I]
2010 in films and TV-series - according to Film Excess

Watch the trailer for the movie here, and you'll know fast if it's your style...

Cost: 62.7 mil. $ (down from 69 mil. $ after tax credits)
Box office: 86.8 mil. $
= Big flop
[Dinner opened #2 in North America with a 23.5 mil. $ first weekend and grossed 73 mil. $ (84.5 % of the total gross) there. The film's international performance was especially disappointing; its 2nd and 3rd biggest markets were the UK (4 mil. $/4.6%) and Australia (3.2 mil. $/3.7 %). Dinner with Schmucks is rotten at 42 % with a 5.4 critical average on Rotten Tomatoes.]

What do you think of Dinner with Schmucks?
Compare it to the original French film, if you've seen it