Bob's Take: Some films worth it for chance to see favorite star

Every movie fan has them: the stars you like so much, you’ll watch them in just about anything. The movie might be horrible, but you convince yourself it’s worth it because of that favorite actor.

Well, this week a few of my favorites open in new comedies. One movie has a bit of a cruel edge but a soft heart. The other is a family dramedy that is surprisingly honest in its portrayal of married life.

Let’s begin with “Dinner for Schmucks,” in which Paul Rudd plays a corporate rising star who gets caught in a strange competition. The way to get ahead with the boss is to bring the ultimate loser to dinner.

Paul’s ultimate loser, played by Steve Carell, is an IRS agent who builds detailed dioramas peopled by dead mice.

This kind of broad comedy, directed by the man who brought us Austin Powers and “Meet the Fockers,” isn’t my favorite kind of movie. But Rudd is one of my favorite comedic actors.

Born in New Jersey but largely raised in the Kansas City area, Rudd, 41, has a handsome, everyman face in the mold of Tom Hanks. He went to Kansas University, studied drama at Oxford (his mother is British), and got roles on Broadway (“The Last Night of Ballyhoo,” “Twelfth Night”) years before becoming a Hollywood commodity.

He started out playing earnest, playful nice guys in movies like “Clueless,” “The Cider House Rules” and “The Object of My Affection” before becoming the go-to guy for broad comedies.

Movies such as “Wet Hot American Summer,” “Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy,” “The 40-Year-Old Virgin,” “Knocked Up,” “Forgetting Sarah Marshall,” “Role Models” and last year’s bromance “I Love You, Man” have solidified Rudd’s position among casting staples in the broadest, and sometimes coarsest, of comedies.

He usually plays a low-key, put-upon but ultimately good guy, as he does in “Dinner for Schmucks.” His sardonic sense of humor is perfectly matched to those moments when a sly grin slides across his face as if he had a viral case of mischief.

I think Rudd gets away with outrageousness because he looks so clean-cut, wholesome and Midwestern friendly. He makes getting laughs look easy, and it isn’t. I’d love to see what he could do with a meaty, dramatic role. We got a whiff of that when he appeared opposite Jennifer Aniston in “The Object of My Affection.”

He’ll next play Jack Nicholson’s son in the James Brooks comedy tentatively titled “Everything You’ve Got,” opening in December, and then will headline “My Idiot Brother,” about an idealist who barges into the lives of his three sisters.

My other favorites of the week, Julianne Moore and Annette Bening, are a lesbian couple in “The Kids Are All Right.”

The pair must cope when their children decide to connect with their biological father (Mark Ruffalo).

I have long admired Moore, whom I first noticed in smaller bits (“Benny & Joon,” “The Fugitive”) but who knocked my socks off in a series of heavy roles: the harrowing “Boogie Nights,” in which she played an aging porn star; “An Ideal Husband,” where she was the perfect villainess in Oscar Wilde’s droll period piece; “The End of the Affair,” an emotionally draining black-and-white masterpiece; “Far From Heaven,” Todd Haynes’ homage to the 1950s romantic melodramas of Douglas Sirk; “Magnolia,” “The Hours,” “Children of Men,” “A Single Man” — Moore is always compelling and truthful.

She’s had less luck with comedy, though I liked her fine in movies like “Cookie’s Fortune,” “Laws of Attraction” and “Nine Months.”

More versatile, and seemingly always at the top of her game, Bening has impressed in a wide range of dramatic and comedic roles. She’s got a Kansas connection too, born in Topeka, and there’s an openness in her face, her eyes, that often moves you wordlessly.

She was a ruthless con woman in “The Grifters,” an unfaithful wife with heart in “Regarding Henry,” a mobster’s Vegas moll in “Bugsy,” a lovable lobbyist in “The American President,” a laughable and also tragic suburban real estate agent in “American Beauty,” an aging prima donna in “Being Julia,” the town spinster in the western “Open Range,” a psychological mess in “Running With Scissors,” a broken woman in “Mother and Child.”

Bening has twice lost Oscars to Nebraska’s own Hilary Swank, which led one newsroom colleague to ask what great movie Swank must be starring in this year. That’s because Bening is once again getting some Academy Award talk for her role in “The Kids Are All Right.” In my book, she could also justifiably be nominated for “Mother and Child,” which means Bening is having another good year.

Of course, any year she appears in a movie is likely to be a good year for Bening.

Next year you can look forward to seeing her as a political candidate’s wife opposite Richard Gere in a remake of a 1948 Katharine Hepburn-Spencer Tracy classic, “State of the Union,” directed by Garry Marshall. The original, directed by Frank Capra, was based on a Pulitzer-winning play.

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