The Kansas City Star

Something’s wrong when dead rodents generate a film’s biggest laughs.

In Jay Roach’s “Dinner for Schmucks,” Steve Carell plays Barry, a lonely Internal Revenue Service dweeb whose passion is stuffing dead mice and dressing them in tiny costumes.

He might come up with a rodent Ben Franklin in colonial garb flying a kite in a lightning storm. Or a Last Supper of mice in tiny sandals and beards.

Barry is a blithering fool and thus a godsend for scrambling young executive Tim (KC native Paul Rudd).

Tim’s sneering CEO (Bruce Greenwood) hosts a dinner to which his most promising employees are told to bring the biggest idiot they can find. Prizes will be given; careers launched.

Pushing aside the inner nag that tells him this is a really cruel idea, the ambitious Tim gloms onto Barry like a treasure hunter to a pirate map. Problem is, once taken under Tim’s wing, Barry cannot be shaken loose.