Jemaine Clement was without a doubt my favorite part of Dinner for Schmucks. You should read our review, but basically the supporting characters really keep the movie afloat. In this clip, Jemaine’s eccentric artist character, Kieran, inform Paul Rudd and Steve Carell of his process. Like with most creative minds, it involves sex and death. I go through the same ordeal with every post.

Check out the clip after the jump…

Awesom Dinner for Schmucks Clip – Watch more Movie Trailers

Dinner for Schmucks
PG-13, 104m., 2010
Cast Paul Rudd, Steve Carell, Bruce Greenwood, Ron Livingston, Stephanie Szostack, Lucy Punch, David Walliams with Jemaine Clement, and Zach Galifianakis
Directed by Jay Roach
Screenplay by David Guion and Michael Handleman based upon the film “Le Diner de Cons” by Francis Vendor

Dinner For Schmucks invites us to a meal with some of our favorite comedic people, but only servers about half the laughs prepared and sends us home hungry looking for the stale peanut butter jar in the cupboard.

The film is a remake of the popular French comedy “Le Diner de Cons," where a group of rich executives hold a dinner once a month and each brings the most idiotic guest to the table. A concept on its own that could only be funny for a sketch or two on "Saturday Night Live" but not an entire 104 minutes.

Yet this is the challenge for new executive Tim (Paul Rudd at his usual upper middle class leading self) to bring to the table, and boy does he find one in Barry (Steve Carell at his usual hyper-active best), who along with turning every normal conversation into complete disaster, also has a thing for making dead mice into art pieces – something that is funny for five minutes but goes on for far too long.

A major problem with Schmucks is the idiots dinner comes so late into the movie that it almost seems like an afterthought. We spend a good hour following Barry as he makes everything in Tim’s almost perfect life a living hell. As we are introduced to several different characters from Tim’s beautiful girlfriend (Stephanie Szotech), business partners (Ron Livingston and Bruce Greenwood), Swedish millionaire (David Walliams of "Little Britain") and a series of bizarre freakshow characters that are paper thin. 

The freakshows that stick out the most are avant-garde artist Kieran (Jemaine Clement from "Flight of The Concords" in a show stealing performance), psycho ex-girlfriend Darla (Lucy Punch) and douche tax boss Therman (Zach Galifianakis always doing his borderline ‘retard’ best). Only one becomes a guest at the idiots dinner, making many of their scenes funny, but not organic to any part of the actual story.

Director Jay Roach brings his specialty of making the best out of awkward dinner conversation as he tries to recreate his 2000 hit Meet the Parents here, but is bogged too far down in a script hashed together by scribing team David Guion and Michael Handleman, all of which should know how to kick up the heart and story up a notch.

The only one that seems to be break free from the formulaic script is Clement as artist Kieran, who kicks away the banality of these characters with his hilariously grotesque paintings and odd, spiritual love advice. This is the breakthrough performance for Clement just like Russell Brand in Forgetting Sarah Marshall and Zach Galifinakis in The Hangover, for every time he comes on screen you wish the movie would follow his comedic adventures instead of this typical bromance.

Dinner for Schmucks has some good laughs to satisfy a summer plate full of failed acts, but it cannot compete with many of the other bromantic comedies being made today. It needs a lot more pepper and spice in its preparation to make it titillate your brain palette.

Grade: C+

In the latest addition of "Between Two Ferns," guest Steve Carell turns the tables on host Zach Galifianakis. You’d think the two would have formed some semblance of a friendship on the set of Dinner for Schmucks, but Carell is completely on the defense right when the cameras start rolling. These interviews never fail to crack me up, and this one is definitely one of the best. Mainly because Carell has a big nose and Galifianakis is overweight.

Check out the video after the jump… 

The vote is still out here at SJ on whether Lucy Punch is a butterface or not. What we do know is she is in very high in demand lately with Dinner for Schmucks this week and then taking over for Nicole Kidman in Woody Allen’s You Will Meet A Tall Dark Stranger this fall, where she’ll be playing Anthony Hopkins’s young plaything.

A word from Lucy: “No man in all the kingdom will resist me with the hats I wear.”

As long as you wear them low over your face. Sorry, I don’t keep my gloves up.

More pics of Lucy after the jump…

Nick Kroll is one funny motherf*cker. You may best know him as Bobby Bottleservice from the Ed Hardy Boyz Funny or Die videos, or Ruxin on FX’s "The League," but he’s also an amazing stand-up comedian with several characters in his repertoire.

Fabrice Fabrice is Nick’s extremely flamboyant, homosexual alter ego who dabbles in craft services. Fabrice Fabrice caught up with Dinner for Schmucks star Steve Carell at one of his snack tables and asked him a few professional and rather personal questions. It results in rosy cheeks and the improper enjoyment of fresh fruit.

There’s a new Dinner For Schmucks trailer that shows a few funny clips we haven’t seen yet. Mostly it highlights Rudd and Carell’s chemistry, but also introduces Lucy Punch, who play Paul Rudd’s spear-wielding stalker. The more I see of this movie, the more I like. Not only do they shine a light on beastiality and puppet sex, but now the filmmaker’s have trained their sights on diluted, pyschotic women. Makes me want to find a dangerous stalker of my very own. If anyone’s looking for me, I’ll be at that abandoned semi-trailer they turned into a strip club.

HAVE A LOOK AT RUDD’S STRANGE AFTER THE JUMP…

^{A still from Kirk Douglas‘s soon-to-be-released sex tape.}

The newest trailer for the Paul Rudd/Steve Carell buddy pic Dinner for Schmucks gives us a much better look at the schmuckly antics the film serves up. Here you get a glimpse of car accidents, vulture kissing, muscle-pulling, Satan costumes, a woman with the piercing glare of Udo Kier, creepy puppets, and mind bullets. It’s like a glimpse inside the mind of Gary Busey. Needs wolves though.

Wrap your eyes around the new trailer after the jump…

Dinner for Schmucks — Trailer – Watch more Movie Trailers

The trailer for the Steve Carell/Paul Rudd comedic romp Dinner for Schmucks has hit the Netz. It’s directed by Jay Roach of Meet the Parents/Fockers fame, and Austin Powers in Goldmember infamy. The film tells the story of a rising executive who “succeeds” in finding the perfect guest, an IRS employee, for his boss’s monthly event, a so-called “dinner for idiots,” which offers certain advantages to the exec who shows up with the biggest buffoon.

Dinner for Schmucks also stars Zach Galifianakis as a wannabe mind reader with a nicely groomed beard, and Bruce Greenwood as the boss/host of the degrading dinner party. I enjoy Rudd and Carell’s repoire from 40 Year Old Virgin, but something felt off in this trailer. The taxidermied mouse bit is the most intriguing aspect of the film right now. I’d see it just to get a glimpse of all the famous artwork Carell’s character recreates with dead rodent corpses. The Dali one is gonna be meeeeeessed up.

Check out the trailer below. Dinner for Schmucks gets served up July 23, 2010.

Dinner for Schmucks – Watch more Movie Trailers

Steve Carell either has to pass a fairly large bowel movement, or his character in Dinner For Schmucks must wear a perpetual scowl. Here are the first set photos from the comedy, which on top of starring Carell and Rudd, also touts Zach Galifianakis, cinemas new bearded "it" actor.

Dinner for Schmucks, a remake of director Francis Veber’s César award-winning 1998 comedy Le dîner de cons (Literally translated as “The Dinner of Dumbasses”), concerns a renowned publisher who encourages his friends to find the most pathetic guests possible for their weekly dinner party.

Sounds like Thanksgiving at your house last week. OH SNAP! I’m sure this comedy centered around a riotous dinner party will bust more than a few guts (man, they just keep coming) when it opens July 23, 2010.

Check ou Paul Rudd, most likely also wobbling toward the crapper, below. 

(via Collider)