Salon.com > Dinner for Schmucks

What makes Paul Rudd laugh

Fri, 30 Jul 2010 00:29:00 +0000

Allow us to make a modest proposal: Paul Rudd is one of the great comic leading men of his generation. With his boyish charm and unassuming good looks, he could easily have ended up as a romantic-comedy lightweight, following the template laid out by his breakthrough role in "Clueless." But instead, he's spent much of the last decade surrounding himself with stand-ups and sketch comics, matching wits with Steve Carell and Seth Rogen in "The 40-Year-Old Virgin" and guesting as an oily Lamaze instructor on "Reno 911." Although he studied Jacobean drama at Oxford, Rudd's classical background hasn't prevented him from improvising alongside club-hardened comics, a talent that serves him mightily well in "Dinner for Schmucks."

“Dinner for Schmucks”: Steve Carell’s greatest nerd role?

Thu, 29 Jul 2010 11:01:00 +0000

American movie comedy operates within such narrow limits, most of the time, that even relatively minor innovations -- like the nerdy-absurdist sweetness, or nerdy-sweet absurdism, of current comedy king Judd Apatow -- can seem like a big deal. One sure sign that Apatow's shtick is descending into formula is how cannily it can be cloned in a minor but reasonably amusing Hollywood concoction like "Dinner for Schmucks." Adapted from a 1998 hit by French comedy veteran Francis Veber (released here as "The Dinner Game") and fueled by a lovable-loser star turn from rubber-faced Steve Carell, "Dinner for Schmucks" may be a more successful Apatow imitation than his last several films as producer or director.