Somber ‘Entertainment’ true to dark subject matter

Published 6:30 pm Wednesday, November 18, 2015

Isn’t it time for Andy Kaufman to stop pretending he died in 1984, and return to his place in the comedy world?

One of Kaufman’s prime pieces of conceptual theater — embodying a belligerent anti-comedian named Tony Clifton — has been honed by somebody else in his absence. Gregg Turkington has carved out his own queasy niche in comedy with his horrible alter ego, Neil Hamburger.

Armed with stale material, an octopus-like comb-over, and a habit of clearing the phlegm from his throat in the middle of his punch lines, Hamburger is an offensive creep whose style of joke-telling was outdated in 1968. Turkington has rolled out this character on records and online, and sometimes in front of live audiences who are clearly not getting the anti-joke.

Now this persona takes center stage in “Entertainment,” although the movie does not name Turkington’s stand-up comic. In the film, this deliberately unfunny shtick is the on-stage act of a morose sad sack playing a dismal tour of cheap bars in the Mojave Desert.

Off-stage, his comb-over is gone and his voice is back to normal. He doesn’t actually talk much in the real world, except in desperate phone calls to an apparently estranged daughter.

As the tour grinds on, the comic becomes increasingly incoherent during his show, a breakdown that happens in front of bewildered but mostly indifferent barflies.

Tye Sheridan (“The Tree of Life”) plays a young clown sharing the bill with the comic, and a few cameos brighten the way: John C. Reilly as the comic’s successful cousin, a man who looks across the brown nothingness of the desert hills and boasts about how much land he owns; Michael Cera as a stranger who confronts the comic in a men’s room; Amy Seimetz, briefly, as the target of the comic’s onstage rant.

The film’s somber mood is consistent with director Rick Alverson’s “The Comedy” (2012), which also reveled in toxic behavior and the idea of how repellent some humor can be. “Death of a Salesman,” with which “Entertainment” shares some affinities, is a laff riot by comparison.

The film is darker than Turkington’s onstage serving of Hamburger; it’s so uncompromising it barely makes a nod in the direction of entertainment. In some ways Alverson and Turkington have achieved some kind of perfect pitch with this character. But that means there’s really nowhere else to go from here.

“Entertainment” (3 stars)

Gregg Turkington plays a variation on his anti-comic Neil Hamburger character, as a miserably unfunny comedian who seems to be having a breakdown as he tours lousy bars in the Mojave Desert. The movie itself barely makes a nod in the direction of entertainment, but it is grimly true to its downbeat subject.

Rating: R, for language, subject matter

Showing: Northwest Film Forum