At awards shows the presenters are forever trying to make scripted banter funny. The results are usually painful.
There are exceptions. If you watched this year’s Golden Globes, you saw Kristen Wiig and Steve Carell give a flawless two-minute demonstration of comedy while giving out the Best Animated Feature award. It was hilarious, and it also confirmed that some things — especially comedy — should be left to the experts, to the people who have put 10,000 hours into perfecting a craft.
Which brings us to “The Comedian,” a new film starring Robert De Niro. In this comedy-drama, De Niro plays Jackie Burke, a well-traveled stand-up comedian whose “shock comic” reputation has grown tired over the years.
This scenario requires De Niro to perform a few actual stand-up routines. Now, despite the seemingly random movie roles he’s taken in recent years, I think we can agree that Robert De Niro is a mighty actor. He can do a lot of things.
He can certainly be funny. But telling jokes is hard.
De Niro gets the joke-telling all wrong. Everything that pros like Wiig and Carell have down — timing, intonation, knowing just when to pause and look at the audience — De Niro doesn’t have in his bones.
Granted, even if a veteran comedian like Billy Crystal (who cameos here) had played Jackie Burke, “The Comedian” would still have issues. Its plot is sprawling and its conclusions bland, and director Taylor Hackford struggles to keep things aloft.
Jackie is arrested for punching a nitwit at one of his shows. Doing community service, he meets Harmony (Leslie Mann), a much younger woman who nevertheless falls for Jackie, sort of, because of the charm of his vulgar, insulting routines.
It is a great tribute to Mann, the high-pitched cut-up from “This Is 40” and “The Other Woman,” that she manages to get some laughs and occasionally make the story feel authentic. Some funny people are also very good at being real, and Mann is one of them.
The cast includes Danny DeVito and Patti LuPone as Jackie’s long-exasperated brother and sister-in-law, Edie Falco as his agent, and Harvey Keitel as Harmony’s mobster father. Keitel and De Niro share movie history going back to “Mean Streets,” and their big scene together is pretty good.
There’s an irony lurking behind De Niro’s fumbled turn. In 1982 he gave one of his greatest performances in “The King of Comedy,” which is still one of Martin Scorsese’s most interesting pictures.
In that film, De Niro plays a pathetic wannabe-comedian who kidnaps a talk-show host in order to do his own terrible stand-up act on national TV. Nobody could play that part like De Niro played it. But telling good jokes? That’s a whole different skill.
“The Comedian” (1 1/2 stars)
Robert De Niro plays an aging “shock comic” who tries to get his career back while befriending a younger woman (Leslie Mann, doing valiant work). Director Taylor Hackford can’t corral the sprawling storyline, but more importantly De Niro doesn’t have the expert comic timing and intonation that a supposedly famous stand-up comedian would have.
Rating: R, for language, subject matter
Showing: Alderwood Mall, Everett Stadium, Marysville, Oak Tree, Pacific Place, Sundance Cinemas, Cascade Mall
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