Noticias

I once thought the European mind couldn’t comprehend Dinner for Schmucks. I now know how wrong I was.

14 ‘Dinner for Schmucks’ (2010)

The 1998 French film Le Dîner de Cons (“dinner of fools”) won a ton of awards and sparked three different Indian adaptations: 2007’s Hindi-language Bheja Fry, 2008’s Kannada-language Mr. Garagasa and 2010’s Malayalam-language April Fool. The original film is based on a 1999 French play of the same name. When it was still a stage production, the title was often translated in English as The Prat’s Dinner or The Cunt’s Dinner.

13 ‘The Last House on the Left’ (2009)

The 2009 Wes Craven film is a remake of a 1972 Wes Craven film, which in turn was based on the 1960 Swedish film Jungfrukällan (“the virgin spring”). That film was actually based on a 13th-century Scandinavian ballad, “Töres döttrar i Wänge,” a real mindfreak about the tragic origin of a local Swedish church.

Ginger & Fed, the new international film sales arm of Federation Studios headed by former TF1 Studio boss Sabine Chemaly, will launch several high profile titles at the Unifrance Rendez-Vous, including “The Future Awaits,” Niels Tavernier’s WWII-set drama based on the true story of a Holocaust survivor. Ginger & Fed will also bow sales on “Riviera Revenge,” a heartwarming comedy starring André Dussollier (“The Crime is Mine”), Sabine Azéma (“Tanguy”) and Thierry Lhermitte (“The Dinner Game”), along with continuing deals on “Rachel’s Game,” “Survive” and “Oldies and Goodies.”

Produced by Yves Darondeau at Bonne Pioche Cinema (“March of the Penguins”), “The Future Awaits” tells the story of Tauba Birenbaum, whose testimony was collected in July 1997 to become part of Steven Spielberg’s Institute for Visual History. The film opens in July 1942, during the Vel’ d’Hiv’ Roundup of Jewish families in Paris. 13-year-old Tauba and her parents, who are Polish Jews,...

Clockwise from top left: The Wicker Man (Warner Bros.), Vanilla Sky (Paramont), Oldboy (FilmDistrict), The Toy (Columbia)Image: AVClub

In Hollywood, it often seems that the sincerest form of flattery is to remake a foreign film. Domestic versions of international hits are a long-running thing in a town where familiarity assumes success,...

The fact that “Amélie” director Jean-Pierre Jeunet’s first movie in nine years is quietly being dumped on Netflix without festival play or advance press of any kind after Jeunet insisted that he would only partner with the streamer as “a last resort” is really the only review you should need when it comes to “Bigbug,” of 2050 (mark it on your calendars). And yet — as this feature-length cluster headache makes perfectly clear — humankind has already surrendered itself to the mercy of our corporate machine overlords, meaning that even the most exasperated critic has to pump out at least 600 words just to convince the tiny God-king inside the Google algorithm not to banish their content to the elephant graveyard that is page two of the search results. So let’s get on with it.

A filmmaker whose breakthrough successes don’t entirely diminish the feeling that he was put on this...

After polling critics from around the world for the greatest American films of all-time, BBC has now forged ahead in the attempt to get a consensus on the best comedies of all-time. After polling 253 film critics, including 118 women and 135 men, from 52 countries and six continents a simple, the list of the 100 greatest is now here.

Featuring canonical classics such as Some Like It Hot, Dr. Strangelove, Annie Hall, Duck Soup, Playtime, and more in the top 10, there’s some interesting observations looking at the rest of the list. Toni Erdmann is the most recent inclusion, while the highest Wes Anderson pick is The Royal Tenenbaums. There’s also a healthy dose of Chaplin and Lubitsch with four films each, and the recently departed Jerry Lewis has a pair of inclusions.

Check out the list below (and my ballot) and see more on their official site.

100. (tie) The King of Comedy (Martin Scorsese,...

Film Movement continues with its Classic series and delivers their next title in a continuing line-up of new Blu-ray presentations, The Tall Blond Man with One Black Shoe, a seminal French comedy of the period from director Yves Robert. A stylized paean to the comedic tradition of Jerry Lewis, this is straight-faced screwball comedy not quite as daring or inventive as the title’s sterling reputation promises (it did win the Silver Bear at the Berlin Film Festival). Notable, especially considering the significant talent in front of and behind the camera, it’s a comedy classic of uncomplicated froth, though its ability to amuse now seems dwarfed by expectation.

Traveling violinist Francois (Pierre Richard) is misidentified as a superspy by France’s national intelligence. As a host of people desperately attempt to interpret Francois’ strange actions, everyone becomes more and more assured of his significant skills. Meanwhile, Francois is embroiled...

By Any Other Name: Patellerie & Delaporte’s Debut a Comfortably Forced Farce

Matthieu Delaporte and Alexandre de La Patelliere’s co-directorial debut, What’s in a Name? is a comfortable, graciously performed adaptation of their hit, one-setting stage play about a volatile dinner party, and, in fact, has become one of the biggest blockbusters in the history of French film. Breezy, intellectual sparring that’s an equal mix of comedic timing and dark realizations amongst its five characters, the film manages to avoid feeling like a play on film, but its likeness to other, superior films dealing with similar familial unrest around the dinner table lends it a rather tired air, especially considering its insistence on easily attained resolution.

A mistaken pizza delivery brings us to the home of a professor, Pierre (Charles Berling) and Babu (Valerie Benguigui), his school teacher wife. She’s preparing a Moroccan cuisine for what...

Delivery Man

Directed by: Ken Scott

Starring: Vince Vaughn, Cobie Smulders, Chris Pratt

Rating: Not Yet Rated

Release Date: November 22, 2013

Trailer Score: 5/10

Thoughts by Tsr: I didn’t look at the running time of this teaser before pressing play, so it ended just as it seemed to be getting started. It does a good enough job setting up the premise, I suppose, but there isn’t really much of note in this first look. It’s hard to fault it for not being funny when it only has 68 seconds to work with. Its goal is to tell us that it’s about a sperm donor who fathered 533 kids and to win us over on the schlubby charm of Vince Vaughn. For me, it definitely does one of those things (hint: it’s the first one).

Vince Vaughn hasn’t been a selling point for me in a long time, but his repeated “What?...

While Steve Carell has been positioned as the next big comedy star, the projects he's chosen have been disappointments for the most part. For every "Crazy Stupid Love" there has been a "Seeking A Friend For The End Of The World," while an ambitious concept like "Dinner For Schmucks" (a remake of much better and excellent French film "The Dinner Game") may have done decently at the box office (barely) but wasn't exactly all that memorable. Now comes "The Incredible Burt Wonderstone," another big idea comedy that unfortunately looks pretty tedious. The first trailer has dropped for the movie and presents Carell and Steve Buscemi as a magician duo whose old timey Las Vegas show is losing audience members to the flashier stylings of the Criss Angel-like Jim Carrey (who, admittedly, gets the few laughs here). So the magician pair look to change their game, enlisting the help of Alan Arkin and.

David Frankel’s Hope Springs is a sweet film about two people whose marriage has gotten stuck in a rut. They sleep in separate rooms, hardly say a word to each other, and have even stopped touching each other. The passion has completely left their relationship, which, after 31 years, they seem to have taken for granted, or perhaps they never even bothered to notice as they settled down to their normal routine.

Kay (Meryl Streep) has certainly begun to notice, even if her husband Arnold (Tommy Lee Jones) hasn’t. Every day it’s basically the same thing. She wakes up, cooks her husband the same old breakfast before he heads off to work, goes to her job at a clothing store, comes home, fixes dinner, then goes to bed. She finally decides to take the initiative by getting them some marriage counseling, but first, she must convince Arnold to come along,...

Blu-ray & DVD Release Date: Sept. 25, 2012

Price: DVD $24.95

Studio: Hen’s Tooth

Gerard Depardieu and Jean Reno are on the lam in Shut Up!

Jean Reno (Margaret) and Gerard Depardieu (Potiche) star in the 2003 French caper movie Shut Up!.

In the comedy, Quentin (Depardieu) is an amiable idiot who drives everyone crazy with his mindless, incessant chatter. After a botched hold-up, he’s thrown in a prison cell with Ruby (Reno), a hard-boiled thief who refuses to speak at all.

After the unlikely pair escape from jail together, Ruby is unable to shake the cumbersome but oddly helpful Quentin. But Quentin might be just the kind of person that Ruby needs when he finds himself pursued by his former gang and the police, both hoping to lay their hands on the 20 million Euros he has secretly stashed away.

Written and directed by Francis Veber (The Dinner Game), Shut Up! (or Tais-toi!

Film: Bheja Fry 2

Director: Sagar Bellary

Cast: Vinay Pathak, Kay Kay Menon, Amole Gupte, Minissha Lamba

Rating: **

A sequel like this one banks on a loyal audience that contributed to making Bheja Fry a sleeper hit in 2007. This reviewer is not a part of that audience. Leaving aside the fact that it was a copy of The Dinner Game, I found the humor pedestrian and the proceedings simply annoying. Bheja Fry 2 is simply listless.

Kk Menon, Vinay Pathak, Amol Gupte & Suresh Menon

We see the return of the righteous but idiotic income tax officer Bharat Bhushan (Vinay Pathak). Bhushan harbours dreams of becoming a singer and when he wins a quiz contest, he decides to put the winnings into making a music video. But first he must cash in on the free trip on a cruise liner accompanied by the show?s producers and investors. Here Bhushan meets womanizing,...

Director of The Town reportedly attached to new version of 2006 French thriller, adapted from Harlan Coben's crime novel

Hollywood remakes of European films are hardly in short supply, with English-language iterations of Let the Right One In, Taxi and Le Dîner de Cons having hit the big screen in the past few years alone. Tell No One, the stylish 2006 French thriller from director Guillaume Canet, which is set to be remade by Ben Affleck, is a different kettle of fish.

Deadline reports that Affleck is attached to direct the new version, which looks set to be a remake of Canet's film. Yet Tell No One has American roots – it was based on the mystery novel by bestselling Us writer Harlan Coben, but had to travel across the pond and back before anyone would consider giving it the green light Stateside.

Hollywood did its best to bring the story to...

Dinner for Schmucks; The Switch; Grown Ups; Certified Copy; The Hole; Outcast; The Secret in Their Eyes; Shed Your Tears and Walk Away

Is it me or does mainstream Hollywood comedy suck? Look at Dinner for Schmucks (2010, Paramount, 12), a chuckle-free remake of a comparatively smart French satire (Le dîner de cons) whose credits include such credibly edgy talents as Steve Carell and David Walliams (on screen) and Sacha Baron Cohen (behind the scenes). Carell stars as a goofy-toothed, mice-stuffing gumby due to be reeled out for the amusement of rich businessmen at the titular feast. Will charmless Paul Rudd (whose cheese-eating grin is suitable only for playing creeps and psychos) sell out his nemesis cum only friend in the pursuit of a promotion? Who cares? Smug, sloppy and thoroughly self-satisfied, this tooth-grating garbage (which comes replete with featurettes, deleted scenes and "gag reel") seems to have been cooked up by...

The Other Guys

Blu-ray & DVD, Sony, Out 24 Jan

Will Ferrell's usual shtick involves bellowing in people's faces, and while that can work to great effect (as in Step Brothers, his previous film with Adam McKay, the co-conspirator on funnyordie.com who also steered him through Anchorman), here he's more soft-spoken as police desk-jockey Allen Gamble. Pairing him with a comically whiny Mark Wahlberg as a shamed fellow cop was another good move, as the one-time leader of the Funky Bunch has very different but equally impressive comedy chops. While buddy cop action movies have long ago descended into self-parody, this still wrings plenty of mileage out of mocking their tropes – explosions cannot be outrun, police work is mostly paperwork and they even manage to make better use of the current global financial crisis than Oliver Stone did in his unintentionally hilarious Wall Street 2. A high standard of supporting roles...

This Week in DVD & Blu-ray is a column that compiles all the latest info regarding new DVD and Blu-ray releases, sales, and exclusive deals from stores including Target, Best Buy and Fry’s. Catfish Good narrative-driven documentaries are hard to come by, for reasons that should be fairly obvious. It's one thing to be a talented filmmaker; it's another entirely to be lucky one. If we're meant to believe that Catfish is 100% authentic—and we are—then directors Henry Joost and Ariel Schulman are the luckiest talented filmmakers in the world. Because the story featured here is unbelievably perfect. (Keyword being "unbelievably".) To what extent Catfish is real or staged remains unclear, but thematically, it would be awfully fitting if it were all a ruse. Just as the troubling and deeply compelling Facebook-enabled internet relationship that unfolds over the course of the film proves itself too good to be true,...

A look at what's new on DVD today:

"Bitter Feast"

Directed by Joe Maggio

Released by Mpi Home Video

When a food critic ("Humpday"'s Justin Leonard) takes a butcher knife to the restaurant of a celebrity chef (James LeGros), the chef plots the ultimate revenge in this gory satirical thriller from director Joe Maggio. (My review from the Los Angeles Film Festival is here.)

"Case 39"

Directed by Christian Alvart

Released by Paramount

2010 is probably a year best forgotten by Renee Zellweger, who not only appeared in the execrable "My Own Love Song," which went straight to Netflix, but also this thriller that was filmed in 2006, but didn't see a release until last fall. Zellweger stars as a social worker whose latest case involving a child (Jodelle Ferland) that she believes is a victim of abuse leads to something far more terrifying. Bradley Cooper and Ian McShane co-star.

"Catfish...

With the big waves she makes in Hollywood, Kristen Shaal is certainly no schmuck. Her credits include stints on "How I Met Your Mother," "Mad Men," and "Bob's Burgers," and she's the voice you've most certainly heard in box office hits "Shrek Forever After" and "Toy Story 3." Certain to be a favorite guest at any dinner table, the funny woman stars in "Dinner For Schmucks," opposite Steve Carell and Paul Rudd, out on DVD and Blu-ray today.

Schaal plays Susana, the office assistant to Paul Rudd's character Tim who insists that he do what it takes for the two of them to land promotions within their company. Tim is coerced into participating in a mean-spirited contest among his coworkers in which each invitee must bring a person he considers the biggest dunce at the party, to put it mildly. The film is a reworking of the 1998 French comedy "The Dinner Game,...

Catfish [Blu-ray] Premise: A documentary about a man who is who is being filmed as he engages in a romance over Facebook with a pretty woman, then meets her. Will she meet his expectations? Features: Includes Secrets Revealed: Exclusive Interview with The Filmmakers Fox All Access recommendation: An enthralling documentary. Worth watching. _______________________________________ Dinner for Schmucks (Blu-Ray)_______________________________________

Premise: Remake of the French film “Le Dîner de Cons (The Dinner Game)”

Features: Behind The Scenes With The Cast, Deleted Scenes, Outtakes Reel

Fox All Access recommendation: The film has a few laughs, but the extra features should be worth watching.

_______________________________________

Machete [Blu-ray]

Premise: A former Mexican Federale seeks revenge on thoe who murdered his family.

Features: Behind the Scenes featurette

Fox All Access Recommendation: A fun, over-the-top action movie.

Date Night; The Back-Up Plan; Prince of Persia; When You're Strange: A Film About the Doors

What's happened to Steve Carell? After a brief moment in which he appeared to be the saviour of mainstream American comedy, his recent movie outings have brought little but disappointment. In cinemas at the moment you can find him fouling up the French film Le dîner de cons in the smug and unfunny Hollywood remake Dinner for Schmucks, which is shaping up as one my least favourite films of the year. Meanwhile on DVD, Date Night (2010, Fox, 15) finds Carell struggling to generate laughs in a substandard rehash of Scorsese's tragi-comedy After Hours which piles on the overblown set-pieces (car chases, shoot-outs etc) with ever diminishing comedy returns. Teaming up with the sainted Tina Fey, Carell plays a stuck-in-a-rut dullard whose regular night-out with the wife turns into an outlandish crime drama after the...

A horror film starring two unknowns is this week's runaway success as Toy Story 3 climbs to second in the all-time charts

The winner

The Hollywood star system took another beating at the weekend as A-listers Jennifer Aniston and Steve Carell lost out to The Last Exorcism, starring relative unknowns Patrick Fabian and Ashley Bell. The well-reviewed horror flick opened at number one at the UK box-office with £1.10m – behind the pace of its Us debut ($20.4m) but still a great result for a non-franchise low-budget genre picture, and the biggest ever three-day opening for the film's local distributor, Optimum Releasing.

Typically for the horror genre, The Last Exorcism was driven by concept rather than talent, produced for a well-informed audience that tends to actively engage with new releases rather than waiting to be courted by marketers. The title has a long way to go to match last year's breakout hit,...

Semantics aside, Steve Carell is in danger of becoming that funny guy who always appears in the really unfunny movies

The basics

As the price of career advancement, ambitious financial executive Tim (Paul Rudd) is invited to attend a "dinner for schmucks", an annual event at which various eccentric guests unwittingly compete for the title of biggest bozo. All Tim has to do is find the right clown for the job, and Fate seems to have dealt him the perfect hand when he literally runs into Barry (Steve Carell) a geeky IRS employee whose hobbies include dressing toy mice as famous historical figures. Unfortunately, Barry seems to have a destructive effect on the lives of anyone in his immediate proximity, and Tim soon finds himself without a girlfriend and in danger of destroying any chance he ever had of attaining promotion.

The stakes

To read some of the critics, you'd...

The latest Hollywood remake of a brief, moderately inventive French comedy transposes Francis Veber's Le Dîner de cons (1998) from Paris to Los Angeles. In the original, publisher Thierry Lhermitte gets into all kinds of trouble when he conspires to bring a dim, bald, accident-prone accountant (Jacques Villeret) to a club of supercilious sophisticates who compete to bring the most stupid guest to a monthly dinner party. In the French version the guest makes matchstick versions of the Eiffel Tower; in the remake he stuffs dead mice to construct bizarre tableaux of everything from The Last Supper to Munch's The Scream. Roach's crude, tasteless, unfunny movie is even worse than his Meet the Fockers, and sets back the cause of healthy bad taste by a decade.

ComedyDramaSteve CarellPhilip French

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A Hollwyood remake of a French film about a sadistic dinner party game becomes a crass comedy that completely blows Steve Carell's funnyman credibility, says Peter Bradshaw

Steve Carell's comedy stock-price takes a terrible knock with this buttock-clenchingly bad film, a deeply unfunny pseudo-French farce and a remake of Francis Veber's 1998 black comedy Le Dîner de Cons, or The Dinner Game. That was about a sadistic parlour game practised by a group of sneery metropolitan sophisticates. Each would invite the biggest idiot he could find to a regular formal dinner; the dopes would be mocked behind their back and a prize (secretly) awarded to the most egregious loser. I remember very much enjoying the original, but maybe distance now lends something other than enchantment to the view. Perhaps Veber's original has been trashed – or perhaps this crass movie has, disturbingly, located something crass in the source material itself.

Nice guy Tim Conrad (Paul Rudd) has determined to escape from life as a cubicle drone and ascend to the lofty heights of the executive floor at Fender Financial. Optimistic, in the face of recent rejection, that girlfriend Julie will soon consent to an ‘upgrade’ to fiancée he believes his success will secure their happily ever after. Opportunity knocks when company head Lance Fender offers him an audition for a future with the company – an invitation to his exclusive Winner’s Dinner. The price of entry: bring your own schmuck!

Tim cannot in good conscience attend. He has given his word to Julie that he will not. Tim always keeps his word, after all he is a nice guy. At least he was, until heartbroken IRS man Barry Speck stumbled in front of his car and unleashed his well-meaning friendship upon Tim’s once happy life. Barry’s hobby is...

The two on-screen adaptations of the French film Le Diner de Cons (The Dinner Game) - Bollywood’s Bheja Fry and Hollywood’s Dinner For Schmucks - teach audiences an interesting thing about discrepancy. Sagar Ballary’s version of the film doesn’t change a thing from the original, including the transitions and jokes we presume, since they don’t seem that funny when translated. While Jay Roach’s Dinner For Schmucks changes almost everything and still doesn’t entertain. This leaves those who have seen all three films with only one conclusion - adapting a film isn’t as easy as it seems. If the intention is to make ...

Having recently starred in the successful remake of the French film The Dinner Game, this time titled Dinner for Schmucks, Steve Carell is getting ready to star in another remake of a foreign comedy, this time the Argentinean Un novio para mi mujer, which will translate in English to A Boyfriend for My Wife. This news comes to us from Variety (via FirstShowing). The original was the most successful film made in Argentina in 2008, and the remake will be distributed by Warner Brothers. Carell will also be producing.

The plot has a man who believes the only way to end his poor marriage is to have a sex symbol get his wife’s attention, thus making her want to leave him. You can already see where the hijinks will ensue!

I actually say that somewhat jokingly because I like Carell. While the plot seems predictable just from that description (she...

He describes himself as a regular guy, but according to friends and fellow Frat Packers he's anything but. On the eve of his latest film, Dinner For Schmucks, Hollywood's most sought-after comedy actor wonders what all the fuss is about…

It doesn't matter how many drugs they take, or Malawian orphans they adopt, or arcane but fashionable religions they profess, Hollywood actors always claim to be "ordinary". Average. Just like you and me. Point a microphone at them and generally they can project, at will, an aura of perfect suburban normality.

But then, it's what they've been trained to do. Like beagles. Or those workers in Indian call centres who can recount the plot of EastEnders[/link] without having ever actually seen it. Leonardo DiCaprio, when I interviewed him, did not, for example, suggest he was about to go out on what the Daily Mirror called a "nine-hour booze bender" involving...

Dinner for SchmucksCast: Steve Carell, Paul RuddDirection: Jay RoachRating: 1 and half A remake of the 1998 French farce, The Dinner Game (source also of the popular 2007 Hindi flick, Bheja Fry), Dinner for Schmucks is one of those asinine comedies that Hollywood produces with increasing frequency nowadays. A wannabe corporate executive (Rudd) is tasked with bringing an idiot to his boss’s weekend dinner party for the amusement of the guests. So far, so laugh-lite. Next: our smug hero attends the event along with a well-meaning dolt (Carell) who creates artworks with stuffed mice. A cringe-inducing comedy of errors ensues. The screenplay is more ...

American remakes of foreign films have become so commonplace that even a statute of limitations barely exists anymore; Le Dîner de Cons -- the French film that Dinner for Schmucks was based on -- came out in 1998. So by those standards, Zhang Yimou's Chinese conversion of the Coen Brothers' Blood Simple -- A Woman, A Gun and a Noodle Shop -- feels positively warranted. After all, it has been 26 years since the original came out.

Aamir Khan's home production Peepli Live will vie for audience attention at the box office alongwith Hollywood releases Dinner For Schmucks and Grown Ups this week.While Aamir's film is a satire on the rural-urban divide in India, director Jay Roach's film is inspired by French play The Dinner Game by Francis Veber. The Dinner Game was also the inspiration behind Bollywood hit Bheja Fry starring Vinay Pathak and Rajat Kapoor.Roach says his film is about a group of rich stockbrokers, who search eccentric characters with unique talents, to be entertained by them over dinner."Find a ...

Safety first. “Dinner for Schmucks” clings to that mantra like a corporate lawyer with executive overlords deathly afraid of dishing out workers comp checks to injured employees. The production studio, Spyglass Entertainment, must have circulated a memo during pre-production forbidding experimentation of any kind, taking chances, sharpening the writing, casting out of type or any other non-commercial decision with even the slightest signs of artistic integrity.

It’s not that “Schmucks” is bad. It can be quite funny, at least intermittently. But it reeks of stock, formulaic, standard, unoriginal cookie cutter filmmaking. Paul Rudd plays the Paul Rudd character — an average, modest, generally likable protagonist who always seems to find himself inexplicably and disproportionately on the wrong side of karma. Steve Carrell plays the Steve Carrell character — a clueless, severely socially awkward, impossibly annoying loner with a heart of gold. This odd couple comes together under duplicitous circumstances, becomes entangled...

Dinner for Schmucks Directed by: Jay Roach Written by: David Guion & Michael Handelman (screenplay), Francis Veber (film Le Diner de Cons) Starring: Steve Carell, Paul Rudd, Zach Galifianakis, Jemaine Clement, Bruce Greenwood, Ron Livingston A confession: I am not the easiest person to make laugh. I’m like a comedy death-star, sitting impenetrably through most of what loosely passes as humor, but I am vulnerable to a very specific attack pattern. I also habitually see films on weekday afternoons, where it is not uncommon for attendance to be in the single digits. This is not the proper viewing experience for something like Dinner for Schmucks. Be that as it may, its silences hung like ripe fruit throughout the overlong, often laugh-less endeavor. What I found probably most disappointing, though, was that the premise (you know, the title) is crammed into the last thirty minutes of a nearly two-hour film. The...

What happens when you unite comedy talents such as Paul Rudd and Steve Carell in the same movie? Ron finds out...

Dinner For Schmucks is one of those movies where the set-up tells you exactly how the movie's going to start, what twists and turns the plot is going to take along the way, and how the whole thing will end. It's not the most original story (even the original French version, Le Diner De Cons or The Dinner Game, isn't a very original story). However, the joy of most movies isn't the destination, but the journey.

Paul Rudd plays Tim, a financial analyst who wants to make the big time and climb his way to the seventh floor, where the executives, movers, shakers, and general money-makers reside. He catches the eye of his boss, Fender (Bruce Greenwood), after coming up with a brilliant plan to get his foot in...

In a performance every bit as impressive as the movie's twisting landscapes and nested-doll storytelling, Christopher Nolan's Inception remained on top of the box office pile for a third consecutive weekend with $27 million dollars, putting it within a few days' distance of $200 million.

Big-budget, adult-oriented films that open big rarely show this much staying power -- ones that are long and confusing do so even more rarely. By the end of its run, Inception will become one of the summer's biggest hits, likely behind only Toy Story 3 and Iron Man 2. Not bad for an original vision with no franchise or brand name -- beyond Chris Nolan's and Leonardo DiCaprio's -- to get asses in seats.

Steve Carell's Dinner for Schmucks opened on the low end of expectations with $23 million and second place. Carrell's Date Night opened similarly back in April, but stuck around the...

Christopher Nolan's action film continues its winning streak, while Steve Carell and Paul Rudd's new comedy settles for second place.

By Josh Wigler

Leonardo DiCaprio in "Inception"

Photo: Warner Bros.

The Box-Office Top Five

#1 "Inception" ($27.5 million)

#2 "Dinner for Schmucks" ($23.3 million)

#3 "Salt" ($19.3 million)

#4 "Despicable Me" ($15.5 million)

#5 "Cats & Dogs: The Revenge of Kitty Galore" ($12.5 million)

July faded away and August roared into view this past weekend, and judging by the weekend's relatively low box office numbers moviegoers apparently had summer plans that didn't involve heading to the local cinema. Surrounded by three soft openings from newcomers, Christopher Nolan's "Inception" once again proved that successful original action films this summer are more than just a pipe dream.

The fourth movie of the year to spend three weekends in first place, "Inception" earned an estimated $27.5 million at the domestic box office this weekend, raising its total gross to $193.3 million after opening 17 days ago.

Christopher Nolan's action film continues its winning streak, while Steve Carell and Paul Rudd's new comedy settles for second place.

By Josh Wigler

Leonardo DiCaprio in "Inception"

Photo: Warner Bros.

The Box-Office Top Five

#1 "Inception" ($27.5 million)

#2 "Dinner for Schmucks" ($23.3 million)

#3 "Salt" ($19.3 million)

#4 "Despicable Me" ($15.5 million)

#5 "Cats & Dogs: The Revenge of Kitty Galore" ($12.5 million)

July faded away and August roared into view this past weekend, and judging by the weekend's relatively low box office numbers moviegoers apparently had summer plans that didn't involve heading to the local cinema. Surrounded by three soft openings from newcomers, Christopher Nolan's "Inception" once again proved that successful original action films this summer are more than just a pipe dream.

The fourth movie of the year to spend three weekends in first place, "Inception" earned an estimated $27.5 million at the domestic box office this weekend, raising its total gross to $193.3 million after opening 17 days ago.

Steve Carell, Paul Rudd in Jay Roach‘s Dinner for Schmucks Inception Tops Third Consecutive Weekend: Box Office After topping the North American box office on Friday, Jay Roach‘s Dinner for Schmucks, a remake of Francis Veber‘s 1998 French hit The Dinner Game, fell behind Christopher Nolan‘s Inception on both Saturday and Sunday. Ultimately, Dinner for Schmucks ended up in second place for the weekend, with $23.3m according to studio estimates found at Box Office Mojo. (Pundits had been predicting $27m-$30m.) The Steve Carell-Paul Rudd comedy, which has a mediocre 47% approval rating among Rotten Tomatoes "top critics," actually went down slightly (-0.4%) on Saturday. Even so, Dinner for Schmucks‘ $8,004 per-theater average (at 2,911 venues) was the highest among the top twelve movies. The Paramount/DreamWorks release cost $69m as per Box Office Mojo. Despite its somewhat disappointing opening figures, Dinner for Schmucks could have a long...

In its third go-round, Inception, buoyed by repeat business, continued to stave off all challengers, including the comedy Dinner for Schmucks, which scored a robust $23.3 million, and the Zac Efron weepy Charlie St. Cloud and animated sequel Cats & Dogs: The Revenge of Kitty Galore, which were both Doa. Anthony D'Alessandro does the numbers. Given the chance to laugh or dream, moviegoers went back to dreamland. Warner Bros.' Christopher Nolan thriller Inception kicked away three fresh wide-release contenders this weekend for the top spot, hauling in $27.5 million. Meanwhile, Jay Roach’s comedy Dinner for Schmucks, a remake of the 1998 French film The Dinner Game, savored second place with $23.3 million – a figure that’s in line with previous Steve Carell broad comedies. Warner Bros./Village ...

1. "Dinner for Schmucks" ($8.4 million)

2. "Inception" ($8.2 million)

3. "Salt" ($5.9 million)

4. "Charlie St. Cloud" ($5.6 million)

5. "Despicable Me" ($4.7 million)

Pulling off inception is no easy task — just ask Leonardo DiCaprio's Dom Cobb, one of few extractors capable of planting ideas rather than simply taking them — so it comes as a bit of a surprise that "Inception" was just bested by a bunch of "Schmucks."

In its first day in theaters, Paul Rudd and Steve Carell's "Dinner for Schmucks" won the box office's coveted first place spot with an estimated $8.4 million Friday. A remake of the 1998 French film "Le Dîner de Cons," Jay Roach's "Schmucks" is well on track for a solid opening weekend. But "Inception" hasn't fallen out of competition, not by a long shot. Christopher Nolan's surreal caper thriller earned $8.2 million on Friday, allowing the reigning champion plenty of room to finish on top of the box office once again by the weekend's conclusion.

I’d like to extoll the virtues of a great comedy, but this isn’t it. A word of explanation: I come to Dinner for Schmucks at a disadvantage, because I love the French film on which it’s based, The Dinner Game (1998). I’ve also heard its creator, the brilliant writer-director Francis Veber, describe his filmmaking philosophy, and criticize Hollywood colleagues for always wanting to expand and complicate his material. (The Birdcage is the best translation ever made of a Veber property, but I still prefer his original, La Cage aux Folles.) In spite of this, I honestly tried to approach Dinner…...

HollywoodNews.com: Three films are attempting to stir moviegoers to the fact that there are other films at the multiplex other than the blockbuster “Inception.”

Paramount bows Jay Roach’s “Dinner for Schmucks” starring Paul Rudd, Steve Carell and Zach Galifianakis – a much needed comedy in a summer that has only touted two to date: “Get Him to the Greek” and Adam Sandler’s “Grown Ups.”

Those looking for laughs have allegedly shelled out $10 million to “Schmucks” on Friday night, putting the film ahead of “Inception” which made close to $8 million. However, when Sunday comes, it looks like both films could have a photo finish for No. 1.

Critics have been split on the comedy which is a remake of the 1998 French Film “The Dinner Game” directed by Francis Veber.

“Schmucks” follows a budding finance executive played by Rudd who in order to peg his way up the corporate ladder must...

Even in the midst of decent, more than respectable reviews, why am I not more excited to see the new Dinner For Schmucks? Here's why: in my experience, American remakes of foreign hits are most often inferior. Most anyone fortunate enough to have seen Francis Veber's original Diner de Cons (The Dinner Game) from 1998 knows that to improve upon it would be virtually impossible -- or at least, I hope they do. This delightful, intelligent farce about a mean-spirited game in which handsome, well-heeled gentlemen bring the biggest nerds they can find to a dinner, and how one smug player has the tables turned on him by a most memorable nerd well before they even get to the dinner, stands out as one movie with little need of a remake. But since there's nothing original out there anyone wants to touch,...

"Dinner for Schmucks" may have officially been based on the French film "The Dinner Game," but when I first heard about the plot, I immediately thought of "Dogfight." The 1991 drama, directed by Nancy Savoca ("If These Walls Could Talk"), stars River Phoenix in one of his last major roles and Lili Taylor. Like "Dinner for Schmucks," it's about a game in which a group of terrible people compete to see who can find the most contemptible person. And in both films the protagonist ends up feeling bad about the game and starts to like and respect their victim. In…...

Two films stand out among the opening films this week: a documentary on the nuclear age, and a Korean war drama. This has been a really light summer for blockbusters, hasn't it?

Cats & Dogs: The Revenge of Kitty Galore -- I am not so crazy a cat lady I had to watch this. In fact, I made a point not to. But I've heard not-so-bad things about this kid film. Don saw it, want to know what he thought about it? Read his review. (wide)

Charlie St. Cloud -- Zac Efron vehicle about a young man who hangs out with his brother's ghost. Ok. Well, maybe Debbie can explain it; read her review for more. (wide)

Countdown to Zero -- Doc about the history of the atomic bomb from origin to current affairs. I suspect this will be rather chilling, considering mutually assured destruction isn't so effective in the era of suicide bombers.

Director: Jay Roach Writers: David Guion, Michael Handelman, Francis Veber (Source Material) Starring: Steve Carell, Paul Rudd, Stephanie Szostak, Jemaine Clement, Zach Galifianakis, Larry Wilmore, Jeff Dunham, Andrea Savage, Kristen Schaal, Ron Livingston, Bruce Greenwood Based on the 1998 French film The Dinner Game (Le Dîner de Cons), Dinner for Schmucks follows the story of Tim Conrad (Paul Rudd); a rising executive in a venture capital firm itching to move up to the next floor. Tim wants to impress his art curating girlfriend Julie (Stephanie Szostak), who is currently running the show for artist Kieran Vollard (Jemaine Clement), so she will finally agree to marry him after his countless attempts. After impressing the C level execs. during an important board meeting, Tim's boss Lance Fender (Bruce Greenwood) invites him to join his monthly executive dinner party called "Dinner for Winners" along with yes men colleagues Williams (Larry Wilmore) and Caldwell (Ron Livingston...

In one of the more unnerving comedies of the summer, Dinner For Schmucks tries to lure the viewer in with The Beatles ”Fool on the Hill” playing over the opening credits with scenes of stuffed, dead mice frolicking about. The viewer may find this one-note ploy of rodents in tiny miniature costumes in historical boxed settings throughout the movie a tad unnerving. Being that the film is a comedy, dead mice are funny how? Ironically these dioramas become way more interesting than the film’s characters.

Adapted from the 1998 remake of the French film The Dinner Game (Le diner de cons) from director Francis Veber, Jay Roach.s (Meet The Parents, Austin Powers) American version totally detracts from the smart original. There’s nothing genius or clever about Steve Carell’s role as Barry Speck, a plain simpleton & IRS employee/taxidermist hit by the Porsche driven basically by a guy who.s a jerk,...

With the early reviews of director Jay Roach's new movie, Dinner for Schmucks, being mediocre at best, Paramount continues its marketing campaign for the movie by releasing two new clips that focus on the comedic pairing of Paul Rudd and Steve Carell. Based on the French movie The Dinner Game, which was itself based on a play called Dinner for Schmucks, the movie centers around a dinner party game in which the contestants compete with one another to see who can bring the biggest weirdo loser to the party.

Next Showing: Dinner for Schmucks opens July 30

Dinner for Schmucks - Trailer

Paul Rudd, Steve Carrell, and Zach Galifianakis star

Link | Posted 7/30/2010 by BrentJS

Dinner for Schmucks...

'Funnier than you might expect,' says MTV News' Kurt Loder.

By Eric Ditzian

Steve Carell and Paul Rudd in "Dinner for Schmucks"

Photo: Paramount Pictures

After two straight weeks of adrenaline-raising debuts from "Inception" and "Salt," a trip to the multiplex this weekend might not tax your blood pressure so much as your funny bone, because "Dinner for Schmucks" is now in the mix.

Paul Rudd and Steve Carell's new comedy will likely not sell enough tickets to prevent "Inception" from winning a third straight weekend at the box office. But these two funnymen — reuniting again after "The 40 Year-Old Virgin" and "Anchorman" — should provide stiff competition for Angelina Jolie's "Salt."

Which flick will triumph? It all may depend of word-of-mouth, so MTV News took a look at what the critics are saying about "Schmucks."

The Story

"Carell plays the schmuck of 'Schmucks,' a cheerily moronic walking disaster named Barry,...

'Funnier than you might expect,' says MTV News' Kurt Loder.

By Eric Ditzian

Steve Carell and Paul Rudd in "Dinner for Schmucks"

Photo: Paramount Pictures

After two straight weeks of adrenaline-raising debuts from "Inception" and "Salt," a trip to the multiplex this weekend might not tax your blood pressure so much as your funny bone, because "Dinner for Schmucks" is now in the mix.

Paul Rudd and Steve Carell's new comedy will likely not sell enough tickets to prevent "Inception" from winning a third straight weekend at the box office. But these two funnymen — reuniting again after "The 40 Year-Old Virgin" and "Anchorman" — should provide stiff competition for Angelina Jolie's "Salt."

Which flick will triumph? It all may depend of word-of-mouth, so MTV News took a look at what the critics are saying about "Schmucks."

The Story

"Carell plays the schmuck of 'Schmucks,' a cheerily moronic walking disaster named Barry,...