STEPHANIE SZOSTAK, JEMAINE CLEMENT, DIRECTOR ROACH DURING SHOOTING OF DINNER FOR SCHMUCKS
[Photo: DAVID STRICK, LA TIMES]

Defanging French meanness

Dinner for Schmucks takes a cruel idea and makes it kind. It's a Hollywood riff on a 12-year-old French comedy by Francis Véber, master of brittle French farces whose work has often been redone stateside before -- including the mega-hit, La Cage aux Folles. The mean premise is that a man has to win advancement from his employers by bringing the biggest fool he can find to a dinner where an award is given for the most idiotic "guest." The advancement-hungry individual in Schmucks is the appealing comedian Paul Rudd (Tim). His "schmuck," whom he discovers, not too subtly, by running over him on the street, is American lead comic du jour Steve Carrell (Barry). (This is Carrell's and Rudd's third time together.)

Dinner for Schmucks is a riff, but it starts off close to Veber's original in its basic premises. In both movies the main character is having back and relationship issues. In the posh Paris version he's a literary editor; Roach has given Tim an all-American but morally suspect job: junior exec in a private equity firm ready to do anything to survive. The dummkopf in both versions generates endless problems through well-intentioned meddling in his handler's life; the plan to exploit him ultimately backfires. Both of the fools are tax officials whose hobby is making little models. The French ones are miniature facsimiles of monuments made of matchsticks. Barry's are dollhouse-like installations featuring stuffed and costumed mice -- a hobby that's not just nerdy but creepy-cute. If you don't go for the sometimes crude and slapstick humor of this American version, you may find the costumed mice pretty droll: they are featured in the light and elegant opening credits, the dinner game sequence, and at the end, and each time the elaborate dioramas are ingenious and witty.

Véber's film came from a Boulevard comedy he also wrote that ran for three months in Paris, and the dialogue involves the kind of repartee and rapid timing you'd expect in a stage play. In his films Véber often includes a fool. The difference here is in the cold way said ignoramus is judged for his idiocy level, like a prize pig. The original film brings out a cruel, snobbish element in French culture. Roach, who is known for the Austin Powers franchise, Meet the Parents, and Meet the Fockers, pushed for maximum improvisation at every stage of making the film. The result is more physical business and less wit. We never get any insight into the mindset behind the dinner game.

A good feature is that women seem to have more to do in this version. Tim's girlfriend Julie (Stephanie Szostak) is a classy lady, an art gallery person managing an oversexed megalomaniac artist played by Jemaine Clement, who dresses up in horns and hooves like a satyr for private pre-sex tableaux. His artwork is all giant staged photos of himself. This is a role that strongly suggests Russell Brand, except that Clement is more macho and soulful. He typifies this movie's tendency to stage random cadenzas that make the main plot irrelevant. More crudely conceived is Tim's longtime psycho stalker Darla (Lucy Punch) whom Barry disastrously confuses with Julie.

The final dinner party, if you're not exhausted by the time we get there, is a real extravaganza in which the other "schmuicks" seem not so much numbskulls and fools as spectacularly crazy weirdos, including a woman who can channel the souls of dead animals, a man with a giant sculptured beard, a creepy ventriloquist whose dummy is a nagging wife, and a blind swordsman who's not so good at avoiding smashing things. Barry's own IRS boss Therman (Zach Galifianakis) somehow shows up and is deemed a prime contender, though why his fantasy that he can enter and mould people's minds is supposed to be so funny eludes me.

A major weakness of Roach's movie is the way Tim lets Barry walk all over him. Rudd's character, meant to be blindly manipulative, seems totally weak. Carrell is a bit too skillful at making his annoying dope seem basically lovable. Barry winds up seeming a nice guy and a paragon of forgiveness. How do we know that's not just utter neediness? In the succession of funny riffs the premise gets lost. Though ridiculous and not bound by logic, the movie's sequences hold our attention, but as happens in Hollywood adaptations of French comedies, the point has been fudged to stage a sweetened Hollywood ending while doing anything along the way for a laugh. Using the Beatles' pathos-laden "Fool on the Hill" to bookend the flick signals its soft-heartedness and confusion. Francis Véber is a master of neat construction. Jay Roach is not. When Janet Maslin reviewed the original Véber version she described it as "staged modestly in high-sitcom style, with a spareness not liable to be found in its Hollywood version." She got that right.

The choice of the word schmuck for the title is of questionable value. The French film is called Le dîner de cons. Con is a hard-to-translate word denoting both idiot and jerk. Schmuck carries those two meanings too. But every Frenchman knows what con means, while schmuck is Yiddish. If you're not Jewish you may not get it, and if you are, you may be offended at such a naughty word being held up for everybody to see.

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©Chris Knipp. Blog: http://chrisknipp.blogspot.com/.