"Dinner for Schmucks"
(Comedy, PG-13, 114 minutes)

The truly goofy comes shrouded in innocence. If a man is trying to be goofy, it's just an act that quickly grows old. But if he lacks the slightest notion of his peculiarity, there's the secret. The blissful ignorance of Barry Speck is beyond pitiful and ascends to a kind of nobility. He's one of those who truly doesn't have a clue.

In "Dinner for Schmucks," a group of arrogant rich men use him as part of an elaborate joke, but the joke is on them. You can't insult a man who is always happy to be just exactly who he is. In the film, the millionaires have a dinner party every year that is a secret joke: Each guest invites another guest who is, whether he realizes it or not, in a contest to determine which guest is the biggest idiot. This is plain cruel.

"Dinner for Schmucks" was inspired by Francis Veber's French film named "The Dinner Game," which was an enormous hit in France but seemed a shade on the mean side. The genius of this version depends on the performance by Steve Carell, who plays Barry Speck as a man impervious to insult and utterly at peace with himself. And a transcendent idiot.

The hero of the film is Tim Conrad (Paul Rudd), an ambitious young man dreaming of promotion to the corner office. His boss is Lance Fender (Bruce Greenwood), who invites him to bring a guest to the dinner. This chance to hobnob with his boss's powerful friends is attractive, but at first Tim says no; he has an important date scheduled with his fiancee, Julie (Stephanie Szostak). Then he meets Barry, a man whose hobby is populating enormous doll-houses and model landscapes with elaborately costumed dead mice. Barry is too good to pass up. He looks like a sure winner.

The subplot between Julie and Tim is essentially the MacGuffin; there needs to be something important to Tim that comes into conflict with the dinner. The film itself settles down, or stirs itself up, at the long dinner scene, at which we meet several other perfect idiots, but none in the running with Barry.

Barry is such a specimen it's hard to describe him. Yes, he wears a toupee. Yes, he seems to have mice secreted about his person. But it's more that he's the only happy man in the room. One of the reasons we love the great eccentrics in Dickens, I believe, is that they're so pleased with themselves. You cannot be a great eccentric if you're not a happy one; otherwise there's no fun in it.

The dinner turns into farce and finally descends into slapstick, but Carell sails through these choppy seas with a steadfast belief in human nature. He doesn't perceive insult to himself perhaps because he can't imagine anyone acting that way. Jay Roach, who is no stranger to raunchy comedy ("Austin Powers," "Meet the Fockers"), makes a good strategic decision on how he handles this: Not only is Barry an innocent, but so is Tim, who invited him to the party for reasons of ambition but not cruelty. So the villain is at three removes. That would be Bruce Greenwood as the sadistic boss.

The guests at the dinner are a strange lot. To describe them would be to give away their jokes, and one of the pleasures of the movie is having each one appear. I wonder if it occurs to anyone to reflect that the hosts of this dinner are the biggest idiots in attendance. Oh, and those elegant little mice remind me of the white mice in Charlie Kaufman's "Human Nature," being taught their table manners by scientists.

Rating: Three stars.

"Charlie St. Cloud"
(Drama, PG-13, 99 minutes)

Zac Efron and the rest of the crew behind "Charlie St. Cloud" want their movie to be weepy, soulful, inspirational, cathartic, ethereal, life-affirming and who knows what else on the New Age emotional barometer.

Too bad they didn't aim to make it a little interesting.

This melodrama about a young man who puts his life in stasis after his kid brother's death is a bore, despite a somewhat clever twist - somewhat because it momentarily jolts the story out of the doldrums before the movie settles back to sleep.

Adapted by director Burr Steers and screenwriters Craig Pearce and Lewis Colick from Ben Sherwood's novel "The Death and Life of Charlie St. Cloud," the movie deals with the biggest of issues - why are we here, where are we bound? - with the blandest of greeting-card sentiments.

While Efron aims to show he's more than just a "High School Musical" heartthrob, he's vacuous in the title role here, sleepwalking through what's meant to be a journey from the deepest despair toward new hope.

Efron's Charlie has everything going his way in his Pacific Northwest hometown. He's a master yachtsman about to graduate from high school and head off to college with a sailing scholarship. His female classmates swoon at the sight of him. He's best friend, idol and father figure to his young brother, Sam (Charlie Tahan).

Then Sam dies in a terrible accident, while Charlie is revived after a near-death experience that leaves him seeing dead people - not in a creepy "The Sixth Sense" manner but in an everyday, how's-your-afterlife-going sort of way.

Five years later, Charlie's stuck in limbo, working as the caretaker at the cemetery where Sam is buried and still looking after his little brother, who keeps popping up from beyond to hang out.

What could ever shock Charlie back to life? Why, the love of a fine woman, of course.

Just as she's about to head off on a 'round-the-world solo sailing race, Charlie's high school classmate Tess Carroll (Amanda Crew) comes back into his world, rekindling his interest in living people, the sea and everything else for which he once had a passion.

The surprise turn in the plot initially leaves hope for something better than a predictable Hollywood ending. But if you give any thought to that little twist, it makes no sense, even within a story where a guy chats with dead folks. So best not to give it any thought.

Kim Basinger and Ray Liotta appear in oddly fleeting roles - she as Charlie and Sam's single mom, he as a paramedic who revived Charlie and asks him the Big Question - why'd you get to come back, kid?

Donal Logue also is on hand for a meager part as Tess' sailing coach, an insignificant character except for his silly name - Tink Weatherbee.

Steers, who made the decent teen tale "Igby Goes Down" and also directed Efron in the piffling comedy "17 Again," does a nice job putting some soul in the scenery, even if he can't manage the same for the characters. The sailing images are lovely, the seascape is bleakly beautiful, and the town is pretty as a postcard.

Efron certainly looks pretty, too, and since he's there for almost every frame of "Charlie St. Cloud," maybe that's enough for his young fans, even if no one's home behind Charlie's cloudy eyes.

Rating: One and a half stars out of four.