Steve Carell is Not Funny

Back into the swing of this thing, not sure of the actual goodness of the last entry so let's see how well this one goes.

I have recently been switched to night work at my job and though it really cuts into my hanging out and availability to do anything, I have recently found myself hours upon hours of daytime television watching time, and all of the repeats and old people shows that come with it. Now one of the things I do love about my free time is the ability to finally watch some movies that I had meant to see but never got around to or had the time for, one of such being Dinner For Schmucks, a farcical buddy comedy starring two well known and credited as funny actors, Paul Rudd and Steve Carell, and while I have fully accepted Paul Rudd as more of a Luke Wilson type of funny, funny in situations where he is surrounded by genuinely funny people ie I Love You Man (Jason Segel) and Anchorman (Will Ferrell) and not so much in films where he is expected to carry the comedy torch like such films as The Chateau. Steve Carell on the other-hand is supposed to be funny all the time, he has been in numerous funny films, some I have seen and some I haven't but heard were very funny or critics loved, and has been the biggest star of arguably the biggest comedy television show since Friends. Now I don't watch The Office much since I really don't like his character along with a few others on the show but I have generally regarded it as more of my personal taste and not a knock on the show that millions of people love, so I started watching the film, and coasted through the first fifteen to twenty minutes, ignoring the fact that I wasn't laughing because it's a somewhat long film, being just six minutes shy of two full hours, and I figured that it was just setting up background for what would be hilarious uproar once we got to the dinner. Another twenty minutes roll by where I am introduced to Steve Carell playing an idiot IRS auditor with a penchant for taxidermy, now I know that sounds funny when written out but trust me it isn't, you find yourself wondering how a person of his low intelligence can find them self surviving to his advanced age, let alone actually holding a job and a relatively important one at that, now I know in my head I am already punching huge holes in the plot, but that dinner has to be coming up and I saw Zach Galifianakis in the preview, and I KNOW he's funny so I continue to sit.

Now I am going to come out and be honest at this point, I never finished the film and couldn't tell you if the rest of the movie got really funny, all I know is that around the one hour portion of the film it became unwatchable for me, which is a fairly difficult thing to do, after all I did sit through the entirety of Hot Tub Time Machine and Bangkok Dangerous both of which I continued to question why I was watching while I was watching them, but this film if you can really call it that was fucking terrible, it was so bad that I literally switched the TV to replays of the MLB action I watched last night when I got home, and no I am not saying I watched the games last night I mean the actual show that I watched last night was on again with the same information and the same cheesy sports jokes and I watched that. So for all I know after the first hour of horrible, the movie could have gotten really good and really funny after-all IMDB gave it six stars which is one better than mediocre I guess, but upon further review what do I see user ratings have all seemed to have given it one and two stars! Now I am not saying that this is the end all be all judgment for the movie I mean half of the user reviews are just one star and the comment something along the lines of "poop teehehehe" but some of them are actually useful and described exactly what they didn't like. Now I have read a lot of these since starting my research and I have come to one conclusion as to why this movie really wasn't funny and the common theme is, Steve Carell.

Now I know, you are just as shocked as I am that Steve Carell the title character of this blog isn't funny in this movie, you probably started reading this and thought that it was a simple typo and that I meant Steve Carell is Wicked Funny or something, but alas it is true Steve Carell is just not funny and simply gets credit for being funny for a character that played out well in count them, one film, that being The Forty Year Old Virgin and even then his character wasn't an outright idiot, he was just naive and off beat a little, now you don't have to take my word for it and can do the same research that I have, but ask yourself if you are one of the millions of poeple who watch The Office, do you watch it for Steve? Is he really that funny, or are you more watching it for the witty banter between Jim and Dwight or the love story between Jim and Pam or perhaps you just love the awkwardness of Stanley, almost no one watches the show and loves Michael Scott, find me someone who does and I will show you someone with an IQ under forty.

Now let's look at Steve's movies since The Forty Year Old Virgin

Little Miss Sunshine

Over the Hedge

Evan Almighty

Dan in Real Life

Horton Hears a Who

Get Smart

Date Night

Despicable Me

Dinner For Schmucks

Now pick me out one of these films that you thought Steve Carell was hilarious in.