Dinner for Schmucks is the new film foray from Jay Roach, director of box-office comedy gold like Austin Powers and the Meet The Parents series. Roach has assembled a hugely impressive comedy cast, including men of the moment Paul Rudd and Steve Carrell, to try and coax some late-summer life into your funny bone.

Rudd plays Tim, a mid-level analyst for Fender Financial (or Corporate Asset Stripping Bastards Inc.), just getting by at work on the cabbage-smelling 6th floor.

When an opening comes up on 7, Tim decides it’s time to swim with the sharks. He impresses his boss with his pitch and gets a foot in the door, but there's a catch. In order to secure his promotion Tim has to attend one of his boss’ Dinners for Winners; if it all goes well, he’s in.

The catch is that the remarkable people that are taken to the dinner are actually a collection of misfits, idiots and cretinous outsiders - schmucks if you will (though the word is never uttered)- to be the subject of the party's silent ridicule.

Tim, being a pretty good egg, isn’t so sure he wants to get involved but when Steve Carrell’s lonely, naïve, and very strange amateur taxidermist falls into his lap, he cannot resist the opportunity.

Unfortunately for Tim, Barry is a unsocialised whirlwind of misery and chaos, and Tim’s formerly rosy life begins spectacularly and disastrously to unravel.

I came out of Dinner for Schmucks not knowing exactly what I thought of it. It is consistently funny- tickling my ribs throughout and ripping an occasional belly-laugh out of me- but it’s so confused and uneven as a film that, despite achieving the main objective of a comedy, I was still a mite disappointed.

Carrell and Rudd are two of Hollywood comedy’s hottest properties, but their talents were sorely underused on rather flat, one note characters. They are both funny men, of course, perfectly capable of carrying this sort of movie, but they are also extremely accomplished dramatic actors. Think of Carrell in Little Miss Sunshine, or Rudd in Shape Of Things.

When Barry Met Tim...

Here, they are unfortunately untested in a film that settles into a comfortable, familiar mid-gear early on, and never really puts its foot down. This is not to say that the actors don’t give their all; this is in fact a film packed with funny, memorable performances.

Carrell gives a game turn as slack-minded Barry, typically without vanity in bottle-bottom glasses, bad dye-job and day-glo prosthetic teeth. That he makes his one-dimensional idiot anything other than an irritation and the butt of jokes is really creditable.

Rudd seems to be channeling late-era Bill Murray, Zenning his way through as the exasperated, broken everyman Tim. He appears to be doing very little but there is some terrific and subtle ‘face acting’ going on, particularly in his engagement with Carrell, where one quizzical look can tip you over the edge into hysterics.

The supporting cast is enough to render a fan of a certain type of comedy tumescent. Ron Livingston, Kirsten Schaal, Jemaine Clement, Zach Galifianakis, and even our own Lucy Punch, David Walliams and Chris O’Dowd.

For my money, Flight Of The Conchords mainstay Jemaine Clement runs away with every scene he’s in. He gives a ferociously hirsute, empirically, inexplicably funny turn as pretentious, idiot-sage animal artist Kieran, who is probably worth a spin-off.

As you might imagine, there is some very big acting from this bunch; huge scenery-chomping silliness and playfully stylised performances from a score of intelligent, quirky comedy players. But there is also some very quiet, straight acting too, where the film seems to want to eschew its broad slapstick to become a verbose indie-com with a (too obvious) message.

There is a real sense of Roach having concocted a leftover comedy casserole with Dinner for Schmucks. It is part big-hearted Judd Apatow style Brom-Com, part twee Wes Anderson style indie, and it also seems to try and retain a certain French elegance, with a lilting acoustic score, and understated titles. It's a weird old bird.

Roach’s film doesn’t know whether it wants to be naughty or nice. Unable to commit to the cruelty of Francis Veber's Le Dîner De Cons (en Anglais, The Dinner Game), the film that inspired it, Dinner For Schmucks falls unhappily between two stools. It is simultaneously too mean-spirited and too sweet.

Barry is socially inept and intellectually deficient. He clearly has learning difficulties and several personality disorders. One one hand, Roach engages his audience to laugh at Barry’s misfortune, his idiocy and his curious life, but on the other we are coaxed into sympathy for the character. We are allowed to laugh at Barry but we should pour a piping hot mug of scorn and contempt upon anyone in the film who would use him and his fellow schmucks for entertainment.

I laughed heartily, but then I felt a bit bad; not exactly what I wanted from my film-going experience.

The film is paper thin, and requires some huge leaps of faith from its audience, but it is definitly worth sticking with. Perhaps wait for Dinner for Schmucks on DVD, when you can enjoy the plentiful laughs, and puzzle over Roach’s (lack of) directorial decisions, over a few beers, without the high-prestige context of a theatrical setting.

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