You may not actually die laughing from watching the new talking head documentary “Dying Laughing” but you will get a closer look into the psyche of the people who stand on stages to make us laugh.
The premise is simple. Directors Paul Toogood and Lloyd Stanton have assembled a who’s who of comedians—Chris Rock, Kevin Hart, Jerry Seinfeld, Amy Schumer, Sarah Silverman, Billy Connelly and Garry Shandling to name just a fraction of the faces represented here—to discuss what it is like to be a comic. One after the other, in front of a white screen, they tell the kind of stories about being on the road, about bombing and how to deal with hecklers that you imagine comics only share with one another in seedy hotel rooms and backstage at gigs.
Occasionally revealing—being a comedian is “too painful and difficult if it isn’t a calling,” says Shandling while Seinfeld clarifies that it isn’t audience approval he wants but audience sublimation—occasionally funny, it is more often than not occasionally repetitive. In story after story the details change—Connelly was once punched in the face in the middle of a set!—but the gist remains the same. “You’ve got to die to get good.” “The more pain you go through the better you’ll be.” Sometimes the language is quite colourful—“Bombing feels like being slapped by your dad at a BBQ.”—but it does go on longer than it should.
Judging by the off camera laughter during the interview segments this was a fun film to make. Too bad it isn’t quite as much fun to watch. A judicious editor, perhaps one a little less in love with the material probably could have cut this down to the bone, mining the interviews for new insight.
For the second time in as many months comes a film set around the world of classical music, with powerhouse performances from an a-list, ensemble cast but despite the similarity of names between “A Late Quartet” and “Quartet” they are actually very different movies.
Both are heartfelt examinations of growing old, but “Quartet,” from 74-year-old director Dustin Hoffman, has more in common with the easy sentiment of “The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel” than “A Late Quartet.”
The action centers around Beechham House, a luxurious retirement home for aging musicians. Three quarters of a once famous vocal quartet, Reginald (Tom Courtenay), Cissy (Pauline Collins), and Wilfred (Billy Connolly), live there quietly until their former diva, Jean (Dame Maggie Smith), arrives. Her presence stirs up old feelings from ex-husband Reggie but might also be the key to changing the fortunes of the cash-strapped retirement home.
Based on a play by Ronald “The Diving Bell and the Butterfly” Harwood, “Quartet” could have gone one of two ways. It could’ve been a depressing look at the difficulties of growing old, or it could have turned into one of those “loveable old coot” movies. While both those aspects are present, so are unexpected laughs, elegance and warmth.
Like “The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel” it confronts the vagaries of old age head on, tackling them with equal parts humor and pathos. It treats its elderly characters like vibrant, real people, even though they use walkers and have lapses of memory. Medical conditions aside, emotionally they are as rich—if not richer—than 90% of the characters we see in any Katherine Heigl romantic comedy.
From Jean’s insecurities (“I can’t insult the memory of who I once was.”) to Cissy’s diminishing mental state to Reggie’s attempts to connect with some young students to Wilf’s roguishness, the movie is an intimate look at courage, fragility and Cissy’s favorite saying, “Old age is not for sissies.”
By times it is also, unfortunately, predictable, just this side of twee and don’t get me started about the unsatisfying ending. Luckily it’s a crowd pleaser due to the chemistry of the cast and Hoffman’s sure, but underplayed directorial hand.
There’s an old joke about David Duchovny. In it he goes to a psychic to get his fortune read.
“I have good news and bad news for you” she says, peering into her crystal ball. “Which would you like first?”
“Give me the good news…” he says, breathlessly.
“Well… you will have a long career in movies.”
“Really! That’s great,” he says. “What’s the bad news?”
“Every successful movie you appear in will have the letter “X” in the title.”
And so we have X-Files: I Want to Believe after a ten year big screen Duchovny drought that included films like House of D, Connie and Carla, Trust the Man and many other movies you haven’t heard of.
Set in a bleak and snowy West Virginia the story begins when a female FBI agent is abducted. After a convicted pedophile priest named Father Joe (Billy Connolly) has visions related to the agent’s disappearance the retired and reclusive Fox Mulder (Duchovny) is called in to help with the case. Dana Scully (Gillian Anderson) his former FBI partner, now his partner in life, has also left the agency and is working as a doctor. She grudgingly becomes involved in the missing persons case despite endlessly reminding Mulder that she’s “done chasing demons in the dark.” At the same time she becomes emotionally involved with a young patient who can only be saved with a radical, invasive procedure. When the psychic gives her a veiled, opaque message she wavers between trusting her head and her heart.
On The X-Files television show, which ran for 202 one-hour episodes from 1993 to 2002, FBI Agents Mulder and Scully—one a believer the other a skeptic—investigated all manner of strange and supernatural phenomenon. No paranormal plotline was too far out for the brooding duo. They looked into the man-eating Jersey Devil, extraterrestrial serums and mutated killer cockroaches. The show was ominous and dark, but it had imagination, a trait sadly lacking from X-Files: I Want to Believe. Co-writer and director Chris Carter seems to have eliminated the “para” from the show and emphasized the “normal.”
The film is a run-of-the-mill detective story with a psychic angle tacked on. Cardboard characters—former Pimp My Ride host Xzibit as Agent Mosley Drummy is direct from the angry cop section at Central Casting—repetitive dialogue and a non-climax make I Want to Believe a lackluster affair.
Duchovny and Anderson bring little of the sexual tension that propelled their relationship on the TV series. He has a few of the trademark Mulder one-liners—and there is a good gag that suggests George W. might be an alien—but Anderson’s role has been significantly reduced. She’s a doctor who searches for ways to treat her patients on Google and spends much of the movie chanting, “That’s not my life anymore.”
A big screen adaptation of a television show should improve on the small screen efforts, but instead series creator Chris Carter offers up a talky nonstarter that barely measures up to the source material. Even a casual X-Files fan could name any number of episodes far superior than this unnecessary remounting.
