King Of Comedy

Year: 1983

Grade: C+

Country: USA

Director: Scorsese

Review

the film this movie most resembles is another deniro/scorsese collaboration – taxi driver. though completely different in tone, this picture features a somewhat mentally unbalanced deniro pursuing the object of his affection. in this movie it’s not the striking cybill shepherd, instead it’s jerry lewis who plays a huge comedian who hosts his own late night talk show. deniro is an upstart comedian eager to break into the business via jerry’s show. sandra bernhard plays deniro’s even more psychotic partner who has a strong physical attraction to lewis’ character. at first the tone is hard to capture. it has fragments of comedy and drama – i wasn’t entirely sure whether deniro’s character was the scary kind of crazy or the funny kind. i don’t know whether scorsese did this intentionally, or whether it is just a product of my being predisposed to thinking of deniro as a tough guy, or some other factor. after an hour or so the film seems to find itself and there is little doubt what the tone of the film is. unfortunately it’s never hilarious or very inspired. i think that seeing taxi driver, casino and goodfellas before watching any other scorsese films was a mistake. everything beyond those three films has been a disappointment to some degree.