Director: Carl Reiner
Cast: Steve Martin, Bernadette Peters, Caitlin Adams, Jackie Mason
Have I Seen It Before: Oh, sure.
Did I Like It: In these reviews, I’ve often talked about how material can be served well or poorly, depending on the form in which the material is packaged. Star Wars may work better on average as a feature film on the biggest screen possible, with some exceptions. Star Trek works better—with some notable outliers—in hour-long television episodes. Fletch is better as a light novel you could read during a day in which you had nothing else to do. Batman was born to live in a comic book before anything else.
So it was that I was chuckling through the movie on this watch, but not especially enjoying myself. The jokes seem isolated to the point of being largely non sequitur/. That can usually elicit breathless laughter from me, but there is certainly a measure of diminishing returns on repeat viewings.
I became so put off by the pacing of the film that I eventually had to stop and play Martin’s Let’s Get Small album. I remember laughing at the absolute insanity of both that album and Wild and Crazy Guy* when I was a kid, and as I listened to it again, I found myself laughing anew at bits like cat juggling and being born a poor black child all over again, even though they left me largely stone-faced on screen just a short while before.
Maybe the thought of these ideas loses something once they are no longer an idea introduced into your imagination, and made a concrete sight-gag in a movie. Maybe it’s simpler than all the at: Martin’s earlier stuff just works better as a stand-up act.
*For whatever reason, I may have listened to Comedy is Not Pretty! once over the years. Not entirely sure why, other than the fact that my dad may just not have had the vinyl on that one.