Spoilers herein.
There's a simple kind of film humor, a movie that provides an excuse for an intrinsically funny guy to do his/her thing. And then there are films like this which are themselves funny. In that case, the comedians can inhabit something instead of merely standing on it.
Very often, such funny constructions are self-referential films: movies about movies, even movies about themselves as movies. This particular example is great: love (even sex) moving from real life through a pretend life in movieland. Then they come back to real life, but not really: the layers have become combined.
We have dozens and dozens of examples of this form in our database. Alas, this one doesn't work so well. Wilder isn't what his name implies. He's the audience, the white space against which a comic maniac (like Zero Mostel in "The Producers") bounces. Carol Kane is more flexible, but of the same stripe. Its an amazing mistake which underscores the reality that much of the time, talented people just guess about what works, using their very limited home world.
Too bad. This man -- like many actors who think they can direct -- needed to be saved from himself. Comedy can be left to intuition for a performer, but in sculpting a film, you need to have a theory to work with. That's unless you can make enough noise to substitute, like the Marxes or (sometimes) Robin Williams.
Ted's Evaluation -- 3 of 3: Worth watching.
There's a simple kind of film humor, a movie that provides an excuse for an intrinsically funny guy to do his/her thing. And then there are films like this which are themselves funny. In that case, the comedians can inhabit something instead of merely standing on it.
Very often, such funny constructions are self-referential films: movies about movies, even movies about themselves as movies. This particular example is great: love (even sex) moving from real life through a pretend life in movieland. Then they come back to real life, but not really: the layers have become combined.
We have dozens and dozens of examples of this form in our database. Alas, this one doesn't work so well. Wilder isn't what his name implies. He's the audience, the white space against which a comic maniac (like Zero Mostel in "The Producers") bounces. Carol Kane is more flexible, but of the same stripe. Its an amazing mistake which underscores the reality that much of the time, talented people just guess about what works, using their very limited home world.
Too bad. This man -- like many actors who think they can direct -- needed to be saved from himself. Comedy can be left to intuition for a performer, but in sculpting a film, you need to have a theory to work with. That's unless you can make enough noise to substitute, like the Marxes or (sometimes) Robin Williams.
Ted's Evaluation -- 3 of 3: Worth watching.