I kept waiting for Jay Roach’s “Dinner for Schmucks” to run out of steam or jokes. But it rarely did.

Not that the laughs built to a big pay-off – nor did the jokes ever evoke the kind of gasping-for-air laughter that, say, “The Hangover” did. But Roach, working from a script by David Guion and Michael Handelman, regularly jolts you with enough unexpected and wonderfully weird moments that you rarely grow impatient with this broad comedy.

Indeed, I’d count this film as one of the rare – very rare – examples of a film adapted by Hollywood from one of those French farces that Francis Veber seems to toss off in his sleep that actually works (“The Birdcage” is one of the only other ones I can think of). Roach and his writers succeed because they turn the story into something uniquely their own, without losing the core of the original. Indeed, as I recall, the Veber original was one of his lamer efforts – which means that the Americans have improved upon it.

The premise remains the same: A group of high-powered executives gather on a monthly basis for a dinner, to which each is obliged to invite the biggest idiot he can find. The one with the biggest idiot wins. (Curiously, despite the barrier-breaking title, the word “schmuck” is never spoken.)

But Roach and his writers have added a level of emotion that the original lacked. In this version, the central character is Tim (the invaluable Paul Rudd), an investment analyst at a high-powered L.A. firm who craves a raise and promotion. When he takes the initiative in pursuing a particularly wealthy client, his boss (Bruce Greenwood) invites him to the aforementioned dinner, which will serve as something of a proving ground.

But his girlfriend Julie (Stephanie Szostak) disapproves and urges Tim not to attend – even if it means losing the raise. She, meanwhile, is involved with a wildman artist (the hilarious Jemaine Clement), whose work she’s shown at her gallery – and whose show has now been selected for a museum show which she will curate.

But Tim believes that the fates are speaking to him when he accidentally hits a pedestrian in Beverly Hills. The man in question is an IRS functionary named Barry (Steve Carell), who was standing in the street not paying attention to traffic because he was trying to grab a dead mouse. Barry, it turns out, creates dioramas of both historic and fictional scenes, using taxidermized mice (one of the film’s most consistently witty and weird running gags).

Tim invites Barry to the dinner – then watches his world crumble when Barry shows up a day early and inserts himself into every aspect of Tim’s life. Tim, apparently, is the first person to ever show an interest in Barry (other than his ex-wife) and Barry is too clueless to read any of Tim’s signals saying that the interest is both fleeting and self-serving.

The subsequent chaos ebbs and flows, but is always driven by Barry’s hare-brained take on what is happening around him. That’s Carell’s genius in this film: He always looks like he’s thinking – but you have no clue what he’ll come out with next. He makes Barry an innocent with altruistic motives – and the craziest instincts imaginable.

Roach blends bizarre verbal humor with inspired and energetic slapstick. Barry is a one-man wrecking crew, raining bad luck on Tim and all parts of his life: his job, his relationship with his girlfriend, even his apartment. Rudd is the perfect foil – smart, but not smart enough to outwit someone with no conventional wits to speak of. Rudd also possesses slapstick skills comparable to Carell, so that he makes a terrific victim to Barry’s free-floating klutziness.

“Dinner for Schmucks” also features a superb supporting cast, particularly Jemaine Clement, who makes the artist’s pretensions outstandingly funny, and Zach Galifianakis, as Barry’s domineering boss. Galifianakis and Carell have a couple of wonderful scenes in which Galifianakis’s character, Therman, exercises his powers of mind-control over the suggestible Barry.

“Dinner for Schmucks” has a few of the hard laughs that you long for, but it also inspires sustained giggles that build and ebb. There’s a surprising sweetness to the film that rarely crosses the line into sentimentality – just enough so that you can laugh and still feel the film’s heart without feeling manipulated. It’s better than the French original, one of the few cases of an American adaptation that enhances, rather than merely exploits, its source material.

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