Jay Roach’s “Dinner for Schmucks” is the first comedy satirizing that well known, if deplorable, American institution of businessmen inviting low-IQ individuals to parties where they are openly mocked.
Just kidding — this isn’t really an American custom. But the idea has been borrowed, in greatly dumbed-down form, from “The Dinner Game,” a far funnier 1998 French movie by the prolific Francis Veber, whose works have long been adapted by Hollywood with results ranging from hilarious (“The Birdcage”) to painfully unfunny (“The Toy”).
Thanks to some belly laughs supplied by the likes of Steve Carell, Paul Rudd, Jemaine Clement and Zach Galifianakis, the overlong, overproduced and decidedly misogynistic “Dinner for Schmucks” is somewhere in the middle of the pack, even though it will likely strike even those unfamiliar with the original as vaguely foreign.
That’s not for lack of trying.
The protagonist of the scathingly funny original was a philandering publisher, an enthusiastic longtime participant in the dinners. For American consumption, our far more sympathetic hero, Tim (Rudd), only reluctantly accepts an invite from his boss (Bruce Greenwood) to help secure a promotion — hoping his girlfriend will finally accept his marriage proposals.
Tim strikes pay dirt when he meets Barry (Carell), an IRS employee and amateur taxidermist who creates elaborate miniature dioramas featuring dead mice.
Barry is so stupid — he makes Carell’s dim-witted character on “The Office” look like a genius by comparison — that he offers to pay when he’s struck by Tim’s car. Barry shows up at Tim’s the night before the dinner and proceeds to wreck, among other things, Tim’s apartment, and his relationship with the girlfriend.
Also in the run-up to the dinner, Barry creates chaos involving the girlfriend’s new client, a self-important artist (Clement) who invites the new odd couple to join him in a threesome while he’s dressed as a half-animal.
At Tim’s business brunch with an eccentric Swiss billionaire (David Walliams[mda: CQ: ], Barry arrives with a woman who’s been stalking Tim (Lucy Punch) and proceeds to pass her off as our hero’s girlfriend.
Like most of the other women in the movie, including Barry’s grotesque ex-wife, she’s a cruel caricature. And the sexual talk is far raunchier than you’d expect from a film rated PG-13.
The only normal woman is lovely Stephanie Szostak, as Tim’s girlfriend, who appears infrequently.
The 80-minute “The Dinner Game,” adapted from Veber’s stage play and pretty much confined to the main character’s apartment, did not depict the much-discussed idiots dinner.
The lavishly budgeted remake, half an hour longer, devotes most of that extra time to an elaborate staging of the event, complete with a climactic fire.
It’s suprisingly flat, with the notable exceptions of Barry’s presentation of his dead mice as historical characters — and Barry’s idiot face-off with his amateur mentalist boss (Galifianakis), who is being sponsored by Tim’s business rival (Ron Livingston).
“Dinner With Schmucks” may actually be the funniest movie currently in the marketplace — but that’s pretty much by default.
lou.lumenick@nypost.com