Just a miserable viewing experience, as much as I liked the non-conformity of Sandra Bernhard's act, and how interesting she was as a frequent guest of David Letterman's long ago. There are bits in it that serve as a critique of "normal" American life which probably would have been the most interesting had they been the focus, but more often it's Bernhard performing musical numbers. There is a satire of the banality and egotism of entertainers in those, but I found it muted, and on top of it, it's hard to tell where Bernhard herself ends and the act begins.
The concept, you see, is that Bernhard got "too grand" in her success and needed to get back to her "roots," as her (fake) manager puts it, hence, the show in front of an (also fake) mostly-black audience (btw huh?) who are shown as disdainful and bored. The whole idea is that she does this act and fails, suffering the humiliation of having her name mistaken by the emcee and smatterings of applause, despite all her boasting over the smash success of her Broadway show. The trouble is, while she's not entertaining the fake audience, she's not entertaining the viewer either (ok, at least this viewer). She goes so far out there that it's just not funny, or interesting.
I have to say, the way she integrates African-American culture into the show is also troublesome. In an interview at the time, she said she made this choice because "it was an interesting metaphor of being on the outside, and showed how much blacks have influenced white culture." I'm just not sure that reasoning resonates. In one of her musical performances, she riffs on Nina Simone which had the potential to be entertaining I guess, but to choose the song "Four Women" with its deeply meaningful lyrics (e.g. "I'm awfully bitter these days because my parents were slaves") and at least partially mock it was problematic on top of being unfunny. There are several other such examples, Diana Ross, etc, leading to the performance of Prince's "Little Red Corvette" in pasties and a G-string at the end. It takes a long time to get there too. There's way too much filler here, which halts any possibility for momentum and pads the film unnecessarily. This is a conceptual piece that just didn't land, and would have been better, I think, had it just been reined in to a stand-up act.
The concept, you see, is that Bernhard got "too grand" in her success and needed to get back to her "roots," as her (fake) manager puts it, hence, the show in front of an (also fake) mostly-black audience (btw huh?) who are shown as disdainful and bored. The whole idea is that she does this act and fails, suffering the humiliation of having her name mistaken by the emcee and smatterings of applause, despite all her boasting over the smash success of her Broadway show. The trouble is, while she's not entertaining the fake audience, she's not entertaining the viewer either (ok, at least this viewer). She goes so far out there that it's just not funny, or interesting.
I have to say, the way she integrates African-American culture into the show is also troublesome. In an interview at the time, she said she made this choice because "it was an interesting metaphor of being on the outside, and showed how much blacks have influenced white culture." I'm just not sure that reasoning resonates. In one of her musical performances, she riffs on Nina Simone which had the potential to be entertaining I guess, but to choose the song "Four Women" with its deeply meaningful lyrics (e.g. "I'm awfully bitter these days because my parents were slaves") and at least partially mock it was problematic on top of being unfunny. There are several other such examples, Diana Ross, etc, leading to the performance of Prince's "Little Red Corvette" in pasties and a G-string at the end. It takes a long time to get there too. There's way too much filler here, which halts any possibility for momentum and pads the film unnecessarily. This is a conceptual piece that just didn't land, and would have been better, I think, had it just been reined in to a stand-up act.