Quick Review: Dinner For Schmucks

This may be the quickest Quick Review I've done in terms of how soon it's been since I saw the movie. Since I tweeted about it after I left the theater (without mentioning the title) I feel it's necessary. "Dinner for Schmucks" is based on a French film based on a French play, "Le Dîner des Cons." In this Americanized version Tim (Paul Rudd), a midlevel employee at a financial firm, impresses his boss and earns a chance at a promotion. What he has to do is bring someone to a monthly "dinner for idiots," where each employee brings someone that they all can laugh at and the boss awards a prize for the biggest idiot. Tim seems to be appalled by the idea until he runs into -- literally, with his car -- an oddball (Steve Carell) who creates dioramas using dead mice. This leads to problems between Tim and his fiancee, Tim and a deranged old flame who's stalking him, and so on. There's a whole thing with an artist working with the fiancee. The artist is played by Jemaine Clement, best known from HBO's "Flight of the Conchords" -- side note: Clement spends much of his time shirtless (the accompanying pic is from some other film but you get the idea) but Paul Rudd is never once not fully clothed. That's a demerit in itself. Eventually we get around to the dinner itself, and at that point there were maybe two moments which made me laugh. As for the rest, well, here's my Twitter update from earlier: "That movie was stunning in its painfulness." I feel like someone should take me to one of those idiots' dinners just for seeing this film. My grade: D.