I can just about guarantee you that you’ve seen Due Date before. I mean, the point of a new comedy is to provide semi-unique situations in which the funniness may flower, so you haven’t seen precisely the same movie as Due Date before (unless you have, and it was named Due Date, in which case that’s what I’m talking about right now, so you see). But you’ve seen Planes, Trains and Automobiles. Or, if not that, you’ve seen the Odd Couple, and putting it in a car really doesn’t change the fact that these guys are polar opposite who hate each other a little bit, and yet there are Circumstances that force them to Figure It Out, one way or another. And man, even if you haven’t seen those, you’ve seen Sesame Street. So don’t try to pretend this movie has a new premise. It just doesn’t.

Not that there’s anything wrong with that. At least, not as long as your movie is extremely funny[1] or has extremely strong actors to carry the conflict on their backs[2]. Because, really, I think the next genuinely new comedy I see will be the first one that anybody has seen in probably centuries and possibly millennia.

[1] This one wasn’t, although it was funny. But there’ve been enough amazing comedies in the last couple of years that I’m both sated and jaded, and therefore more than willing to call out the difference between ‘I laughed’ and ‘I laughed until I was hurting’.
[2] This one did. I will I think never get tired of watching Robert Downey Jr. do anything, and Zack Galifianakis, for all that he is not the straight man of the pair, manages to pull off an incredible and limitless flow of dignity through every obscene, absurd, and insane situation that the two of them encounters, and believe me, these are many and varied. But we already have established that you knew that part, having seen this movie-or-possibly-skit-on-Sesame-Street before.

Imagine you work in “business”, by which I mean the generic everyjob that seems to only exist in Hollywood’s imagination, where people are trying to get a promotion for a corner office, and there’s a meeting in a long room with the boss at the head of the table and people throw out ideas and are called on one at a time and so forth. Got it? Now, imagine that you are about to get that corner office, only you have to impress your boss at a monthly dinner he hosts by (along with all the other invitees) bringing along a complete moron, convincing these people that they’re awesome and up for a prize, and then setting them loose. I mean, it can’t be just any moron, it has to be someone special, like a blind fencer or a ventriloquist who is married to his puppet, or a guy who creates dioramas out of mouse taxidermy. You are now in the midst of a moral quandary, because you’re basically an okay everyperson, and yet this is your only way up the ladder. Oh, and you’re also in a screwball French comedy.

I believe I have now adequately described Dinner for Schmucks, excepting only to add that it was quite a bit funnier than even the fairly decent previews indicated and that it really made a point of working that Steve Carell connection to get a lot of Daily Show people on screen. Good for them! If you like watching funny movies in theaters, you should give it a peek in a couple of weeks when it actually gets released.

I’ve said it before, and I will inevitably say it again: I really like sneak previews of movies. Like, a lot. They’re free, which doesn’t hurt, and I get to see them before other people, which is nice for this whole ‘review’ gig I have going. But they’re usually only a day or two before release and if I’m at all busy, I still fail to get the review out in time. So I guess what I like best of all are the rare previews that are weeks in advance, wherein I get to feel like I’m sitting on some kind of secret.

Yesterday, I got to do that again for the first time in a year or so, at least that I can remember. (If only there were documentation!) After sitting in line for a goodly while and having one of the most surreal stranger-conversations of my life between my friends and the dude in front of us in the line[1], after having all electronic devices stripped from us by the local constabulary[2] lest we make a shitty recording of the film to dump onto youtube, after eating pizza and drinking a milkshake to combat the effects of surreality and douchebaggery, we finally settled down to watch Hot Tub Time Machine, a movie about… well, I think you can tell from the title, right? But, okay, there are specifics, and they are as follows: three high school friends that have drifted apart (and also John Cusack’s nephew) decide to return to a ski resort that was the prime destination of their party days, to reconnect. Except the town is dead, the resort is falling apart, and things generally suck about as much as their lives do. But one drunken night in the hot tub later, they wake up at Winterfest 1986 in their teenage bodies. And then hijinx, as they say, ensue!

It really is a direct port of an ’80s teen sex comedy, except with a nostalgia filter and focus on adult friendships. And there’s also a cute hipster girl for Cusack who really doesn’t fit into the rest of the picture, but John Cusack [contractually] cannot be in a movie without a romantic interest. That’s just how things work. All in all, though? Pretty good stuff and definitely funny, with an excellent mixture of zany, raunchy, and sweet.

[1] I’d explain, but the explanation would I think actually be longer than the review if I did. I can’t even figure out how to sum it up in a snappy one-liner. It was just… bizarre.
[2] And, speaking of true stories: the constable guy actually said this, and my paraphrase is in no way misleading: “If I see you with a cellphone that you’ve snuck in here anyway, I have handcuffs and I’m empowered to march you out of the theater. … Let’s all try to have fun tonight!”