At “Dinner for Schmucks,” giggles are on the menu. It’s certainly more funny, and less juvenile and mean, than the previews and premise indicate. But while it sends a final message about the cruelty of mocking pitiful weird people, it also executes plenty of such mockery for its comedy.
The movie’s centerpiece is a banquet where rich executives ritualistically ridicule eccentric losers, especially “The Office’s” Steve Carell, geeked out as a dabbler in rodent taxidermy. That climactic set piece becomes the plot gimmick around which is built yet another bro-mantic comedy starring the solid, affable Paul Rudd. While hardly an uproarious classic, this one turns out to be better than anything showing a stuffed-mouse diorama of “The Last Supper” has any right to be.
