2.5 stars. Rated R, for relentless profanity and crude humor
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 2.3.17
Portions of this film possess the
buoyant, effervescent spontaneity of the sublime jazz score by celebrated
trumpeter Terence Blanchard.
But only portions.
 |
| When Jackie (Robert De Niro) is invited to his niece's wedding, he impulsively asks new friend Harmony (Leslie Mann) to tag along, little anticipating her questionable taste in attire. Worse yet, he fails to foresee that his doting niece will expect him to "say a few words" ... never a good idea for Jackie, in front of a conservative crowd. |
Lengthy chunks of the wildly
uneven screenplay — Art Linson, Jeffrey Ross, Richard LaGravenese and Lewis
Friedman obviously having been too many scripting cooks in the kitchen — ring
entirely false. The core relationship isn’t credible for a moment, and the rest
of the story can’t rise above that shortcoming.
Nor can Taylor Hackford pull
things together. The one-time A-list director of hits such as An Officer and a Gentleman and Against All Odds has stumbled lately,
with 2004’s Ray being his most recent
success. Love Ranch and Parker did nothing for his résumé, and
this new effort doesn’t improve matters. It won’t make a dime.
Other films have covered this
ground more successfully, from 1969’s The
Comic to 1988’s Punchline and 1992’s
Mr. Saturday Night. For that matter,
Robert De Niro himself did far better back in ’82, in Martin Scorsese’s
acid-hued The King of Comedy.
The Comedian is the familiar story of a
once-great talent grown embittered by the fact that people only recognize him
for something he did 20 years earlier. In this case, it’s insult stand-up comic
Jackie Burke (De Niro), who back in the day lucked into a wildly popular TV
sitcom, Eddie’s Home.
Two decades later, fans haven’t
the slightest interest in his current material; they only want to hear him
shout that show’s signature line — “AR-leeeeeeeeeen!”
— delivered every time his blue-collar character was exasperated by his ditsy
wife. (The echo of Jackie Gleason’s similar bellow, in TV’s long-ago The Honeymooners, seems deliberate.)
Worse yet, people insist on calling
him Eddie.
That might be tolerable, if
Jackie still could command headlines. But these days he’s relegated to the
likes of the tiny, half-empty Long Island club where the story begins: a
miserable fate that he has helped create, in part because of his spiteful,
intolerant tendency to diss people offstage, they way he insults them from
behind a microphone.
Much to the ongoing dismay of his
loyal but long-suffering manager, Miller (Edie Falco).
