‘The Comedian’ Highlights De Niro’s Tragic Fall (FILM REVIEW)

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Watching The Comedian is a little like watching an old friend—in this case, Robert De Niro—make a horrible decision without having any way to stop them. No amount of pleading or appeals to reason can convince them that this thing they’re about to do is detrimental, potentially extremely, to their well-being, and they usually do it anyway, like that time I watched a friend jump from the roof of his house into a pool in 20 degree weather.

Of course, in the case above, I at least have a story to tell as an embarrassing anecdote during a wedding toast. We can laugh now, which isn’t something we can ever do with The Comedian. The line may be fine, but there’s a difference between a fond remembrance of past mistakes and outright cruelty. For the sake of civility, it would probably be better if we just agreed to never discuss The Comedian ever again.

The entirety of its nearly two hours is spent thrashing desperately, hoping beyond hope that it can eventually grasp anything even remotely resembling a point. In the process, it wastes an admittedly decent premise with a contrived plot that never finds its footing, mostly because there’s little ground on which to stand. It’s a front to back mistake, peppered with just enough decent ideas to show how it might’ve been good had anyone bothered to give a shit.

De Niro plays Jackie Burke, an insult comedian and former star of a beloved sitcom, who’s quickly aging into irrelevance. After an altercation with a heckler, Jackie spends a month in jail before starting community service. While volunteering at a homeless shelter, he meets Harmony (Leslie Mann) with whom he begins a whirlwind, only mildly creepy romance that’s put in jeopardy as her father (Harvey Keitel) implores her to move back to Florida to help the family business. Realizing he’s got nothing left to lose he tries to hold on to what might be his last chance at love and redemption.

There are about a million and one ways this plot could’ve worked, any number of which would’ve been fine. Instead, the script plods and meanders through a series of indie clichés left over from a pile of half-remembered C-list movies from Miramax’s late-90s roster. It’s the cinematic equivalent of a once popular band trying to rebrand themselves in the vein of the bubbling zeitgeist of the underground only to produce an album that not only misses the point but also fails to realize that there was even a point to miss.

Standup is, of course, a fascinating world worthy of narrative exploration. Comedy in its rawest, most pure form, far away from the pomp of sitcoms and the circumstance of slick specials, can be a kind of verbal jazz. There seems to be a kind of recognition of this throughout The Comedian, but authenticity—the cornerstone of any worthy art—is in woefully short supply. Scene after pointless scene is spent trying to establish credibility, but the end result comes off feeling like someone’s ill-informed idea of what comedy is like, rather than its reality.

Oh, I’m sure there were some superficial similarities between what’s on screen and what goes on at comedy clubs across the country, but you don’t get to call yourself a member of the club just because you’re wearing the uniform. While admittedly the script does seem to come from a place of reverence and respect, the stink of falsity can never be cleansed, not completely.

Even routines written by Jeffrey Ross—himself a well-known and talented insult comedian—are wasted by De Niro’s inability to perform them authentically. They tried, I’ll give them that, but the result is still akin to watching an amateur comedian bomb at amateur night, only worse because everyone ought to know better.

And those are the best parts of The Comedian. When it’s not focusing on life at comedy clubs, it tries like hell to convince us that Mann and De Niro are a couple we could ever care about, which they are not. Mann, God bless her, is as charming as ever, but the two have less chemistry than any romantic pairing in recent history. Their entire arc feels shoehorned and as unnatural as, well, De Niro on a comedian’s stage.

It’s sad, more than anything. Knowing that De Niro fought for years to make The Comedian forces one to wonder just what happened to the Bobby D. of yore, the one who was one of the greatest actors of all time and could do no wrong. This is the lowest in a string of low-notes that De Niro has been playing since Meet the Parents and Analyze This. We’ve been suspecting it for years, but it might be time to finally admit that the age of De Niro has finally passed. And that is something none of us ought to laugh at.

The Comedian is now playing in theaters everywhere.

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