This near two-hour endurance test was based on Francis Veber's "Le Diner de Cons," 81 minutes of brisk lunatic farce. Flabby, monotonous and meek, "Schmucks" wheezes as it hobbles toward the finish line. For those studio execs who are a little rusty on their Shakespeare: Brevity is the soul of wit. A bit of impudence is nice, too. Rarely does one see a film so frightened of alienating its viewers, so cloyingly timid.

Paul Rudd returns in another of his put-upon, sexless everyman roles as Tim, an executive with his eye on a promotion. His dreadful boss hosts dinner parties where his underlings compete to see who can bring the biggest nitwit. If Tim wants to get ahead, he'll have to play along with the condescending gag.

Because multiplex comedies are generally inoffensive affairs, Tim is a reluctant accomplice. The original was tough-minded enough to make the character obnoxious. He was an arrogant snob who had his life systematically ruined by his well-meaning designated moron. This revision practically drowns in softening agents. Tim has moral qualms about the Idiot of the Month competition. He signs on only because he'll be able to marry his gallery curator girlfriend, Julie (fetching Stephanie Szostak), if he has a bigger paycheck. But Julie is no gold-digger. She, too, is established as a good soul who values true love over material success. So Tim's motivation makes no sense. If only everyone weren't so almighty nice, this story might get a little traction.

Fate brings Tim the ideal dinner guest when he literally collides with Barry (Steve Carell, who has earned roles better than this). Barry is a naïve dolt who crafts dioramas populated with costumed stuffed mice. "Mousterpieces," he calls them, in one of the comedic high points.

Once Barry is in Tim's life, he sets off a series of sitcom-level mix-ups (accidentally switched cell phones, easily corrected mistaken identities, innocent situations mistaken for infidelity) that endanger Tim's job and love life. But because Tim is such a true-blue guy, he endures these irritants patiently, at one point confessing that he deserved just that kind of comeuppance for his willingness to embarrass Barry. At the climactic dinner, which should be comic bedlam, the film becomes an odd couple buddy comedy. Tim offers a speech praising Barry and everyone lives happily ever after, except the audience.

Rudd provides 15 seconds of fun when his back goes out and he does a pained, paralytic zombie walk. Carell wrestles with his abominable dialogue to no avail, rolling his eyes and grinning maniacally. Jemaine ("Flight of the Conchords") Clement once again plays an egotistical pantload, this time a randy artist who may be out to seduce Julie, and Zach Galifianakis cameos mirthlessly as a colleague of Barry's with delusions of telepathic powers.

Jay Roach, the supremely bankable director of the "Austin Powers" and "Meet the Fockers" movies, reportedly went to town on this project, shooting 900,000 feet of film. The final print runs about 14,000 feet, marking "Schmucks" as one of the most indecisive and colossally wasteful endeavors in years. Somewhere in that mountain of footage there must be a well-paced, sharply structured comedy, but it would take an army of editors to unearth it.

Colin Covert • 612-673-7186