'The Comedian': Robert De Niro hams it up as a self-hating funnyman
I've never quite been able to handle Robert De Niro as a comedy guy.
Despite his ingenious performance in The King of Comedy and a nice turn in Meet the Parents, the two-time Oscar-winner has spent half a century playing characters so serious they'd kill you for smiling.
Far more troubling, even chilling, is the prospect of De Niro as a romantic lead. He was simply bizarre as a Gatsby-esque lover in The Last Tycoon. And let's not forget his folie à deux with Meryl Streep in Falling in Love. Makes me squirm to this day.
No. For me, De Niro is Travis Bickle. He's Jake LaMotta. Jimmy the Gent.
I realize this is a failure on my part as a fan, not a reflection of De Niro's prodigious talents. But I was seriously, sorely trepidatious going into director Taylor Hackford's The Comedian. It's a double whammy: a love story about a stand-up comic.
I was pleasantly surprised. At least for a while.
A mildly charming, if singularly unoriginal, comedy about a misanthropic has-been sitcom star whose moment in the sun in the '80s went the way of the mullet and leg warmers, Hackford's picture upends the conventions of the romcom. While it all but falls apart in the final act, The Comedian finds De Niro giving an energetic performance as Jackie Burke, an aging New York comic who gets paid to repeat lines from his old TV show at conventions and 1980s revival shows. It's a mug's life, and Jackie hates it. He hates himself. Most of all he hates his fans, whom he abuses to no end. His mean spirit translates into his comedy, obnoxious barbs filled with misogyny and profanity.
De Niro's character is hardly new or unique. Jackie is a hodgepodge of stereotypes and movie clichés. But De Niro manages to make him human, even likable, thanks to costar Leslie Mann (The Other Woman, Vacation).
Mann, who has done some of her best work in collaboration with husband Judd Apatow, plays Jackie's sometime love interest Harmony Schlitz, a mildly scatterbrained heiress to a rather modest Florida retirement-home empire built by her tough-talking, loud-mouthed father, Mac (Harvey Keitel).
Jackie and Harmony meet while doing court-mandated community service at a homeless shelter – he for belting a heckler who ruined his act, she for hurling a table lamp at her ex-boyfriend.
Drawn in by Harmony's upfront, you-get-what-you-see attitude, Jackie becomes besotted with the younger woman when he experiences her wild personality swings. Demure one moment with just a hint of flirtatious sexuality, Harmony is apt to explode into pugnacious fits of aggression and trash-talking that would make a New York cabbie blush.
Hackford, who is trying to make a mini-comeback of his own after two back-to-back misses, Love Ranch and Parker, keeps things moving at a nice rhythm during early scenes that have Jackie introducing Harmony to the world of New York comedy clubs. The stand-up sequences are enlivened with cameos by a raft of comics including Hannibal Buress, Happy Anderson, Jim Norton, Gilbert Gottfried, and Charles Grodin.
The film also features stand-out turns by Danny DeVito as Jackie's brother, whose every move is policed by his hate-and-anxiety-filled wife (a great Patti LuPone). A scene at a family wedding is riotous, chaotic fun.
The Comedian slides into monotony in its second half. Mann all but disappears, and the film focuses on Jackie's comeback and newfound fame. There's just so much you can get out of this material, and the filmmakers beat it to death. When the film returns to the romance, it feels forced, as does the bittersweet ending.