And then one fateful day, Barry bumps into Tim (Paul Rudd) - or, more accurately, Tim runs into Barry with his Porsche. A mid-level finance exec with designs on a bigger paycheck and a corner office, Tim has just been invited to a dinner party hosted by his boss. It's a dinner with a theme: each guest must bring along someone mockable - a fool, a jerk, a deluded twit. The guest with the biggest buffoon wins.
Et voilà, Barry - like a gift from the gods.
Adapted from Francis Veber's 1998 French farce, The Dinner Game, the sometimes very funny, sometimes not Dinner for Schmucks takes this squirmy conceit - the original was a more sour and cynical affair - and turns it into a mismatched buddies, life-lesson comedy.
Jay Roach (the Austin Powers movies, Meet the Parents, Meet the Fokkers) has cast his picture with standout comic talents: Jemaine Clement as a preening modern-day Dionysian art world star; Zach Galifianakis as Barry's IRS superior, and a man who believes he has psychic powers; Lucy Punch as Tim's stalker ex; and Kristen Schaal as Tim's blunt, bossy secretary.
As it turns out, most of Dinner for Schmucks transpires in the time leading up to the actual soiree, as Barry, both terribly naive and a terrible pest, worms his way into Tim's life. Rudd, of course, is the straight man in all this: his Tim is smart and likable up to a point, but with the potential to turn into soulless yuppie scum.
