I never realized why I hate Will Ferrell films so much. In fact, hate isn’t the word. Loathe. It is absolute torture that whenever The Ballad of Ricky Bobby comes on television my Dad must put it on. I always figured it was because the films were just not funny. Then I saw Dinner for Schmucks and learned a very important lesson.

It takes talent to play a good idiot.

It’s not surprising since Steve Carrell was one of two things I actually enjoyed about Anchorman (the other being Jack Black punting a dog off the side of a bridge). The guy has a special talent for playing complete morons. He happens to have a knack for what is perhaps the most significantly lost art to modern comedy. He doesn’t act like what he’s doing is supposed to be funny. He acts like it is all completely normal.

Some of the best comedians in history were also excellent on straight-faced delivery. The words coming from their mouths were absurd and yet their faces expressed no such emotion. To them they were just having a conversation, or so it looked. This only increased the absurdity, which is one of the fine recipes to good comedy. You want to take something from day to day life that no one thinks of and change the perspective on it. Bill Cosby never cracks a smile in his Jesus Christ skit, neither do Abbott and Costello in Who’s On First.

Will Ferrell may be able to deliver comedy with a straight face, but his behavior is so incredibly exaggerated that it comes off as being an obvious attempt at being funny. It’s as if he opens his mouth and the film says “You’re supposed to laugh at this. So please, start laughing. Because that’s what you’re supposed to do. It’s a joke, get it? LAUGH AT HOW LOUD I AM YELLING!” It completely ruins it because it completely leaves the realm of absurdity. The characters are too obviously stupid to be believable.

Steve Carrell, on the other hand, is capable of playing much more than a very loud buffoon. He can play an actual person, and when he is charged with playing an idiot he continues to play a realistic person. No matter how stupid they are, Steve’s characters never act as if they realize they are stupid. Everything is done in earnest, as if there is a logical explanation for it all.

Dinner For Schmucks is primarily built on this style of humor. The closest goofy character in the entire film is Jemaine Clement, but while having a proper amount of screen time he is also kept off to the side. He is a distraction, which is the best use of such goofy characters. The best humor comes from Steve Carrell and Zack Galifianakis, masters of straight-faced comedy. Every time they speak it is with a genuine belief that there is nothing abnormal about them. In fact, if anything they believe they are extraordinary.

What is most startling is that I enjoyed what I like to term as a Schadenfreude movie. In other words, the movie is nothing more than the subject of one character’s suffering. I am subjected to this sort of humor constantly since it’s the one thing my mother enjoys greatly. RV happens to be one of her recent favorites. I, on the other hand, find this sort of comedy cheap and beyond lame. I don’t care for slapstick, and what is worse is the character is usually doing nothing but making matters worse. Typically one small action in the beginning would have saved them trouble, yet instead by making constantly poor choices they bring terrible and allegedly funny consequences on themselves.

Yet while Paul Rudd’s character in Dinner for Schmucks certainly makes what is considered a mistake, he is not the master of his own fate. He is completely upfront about his decisions. All the disaster is brought upon by the idiotic torment of Steve Carrell’s character, which, again, would normally be horrific rather than hilarious if this were any other comedy. Any other film would have someone like Will Ferrell playing the buffoon, somehow spilling coffee on the lap of the boss while then trying to clean it up by rubbing a towel all over the man’s crotch (double hilarity if the boss is a woman and he gropes her breasts! Eh? Eh?).

Once again, not the case here. Steve Carrell’s character may be an idiot, but his gestures never achieve an extent of stupidity that escapes reality. Yes, it is absurd and the character is clearly a moron, but it’s not like he is a retard that has somehow achieved full motor skills and functionality.

Which once again brings to the point of being funny and acting like you’re funny. When Steve Carrell meets a Swedish man he laughs and starts talking like the Swedish Chef. If Will Ferrell were to do this he might start talking like the Swedish Chef, but he’d yell and speak more slowly. There would be no subtlety, no moment of “wait, what?” as if you can’t believe the character just did it. The joke would be obvious, as if expecting the audience to be too stupid to get it so they have to make it flash in bright neon signs “Laugh Now”.

As such, Dinner for Schmucks actually manages to be an incredibly funny film. It is not the best comedy, especially of its style, and an attempt to improve the lead character and thus fix his love life is ham-fisted into the middle of everything. Yet it is still a genuinely humorous movie with an excellent cast of actors (included small roles to Jeff Dunham and The IT Crowd’s own Chris O’ Dowd).

If you have already seen all the must see films of the summer (Inception, Scott Pilgrim, maybe The Expendables) then Dinner for Schmucks makes for an excellent weekend viewing. Otherwise, make sure you get a chance to check it out on DVD.

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