The Comedian

Review by Pamela Zoslov

I have come to think of certain Hollywood comedies as being like big, dumb, eager-to-please dogs (Golden Retrievers come to mind, no offense to that friendly breed). THE COMEDIAN, starring Robert De Niro as an aging insult comic, is one such dog. Unlike many of my film-critic colleagues, I don't deplore these movies for their lack of excellence — I appreciate them for what they are, escapist pap with some well-known actors that deliver a few laughs.

De Niro plays Jackie Burke, a 67-year-old comedian who is most famous for starring in a long-running sitcom, “Eddie's Home.” Thirty years later, wherever Jackie goes, fans approach him and insist that he “do Eddie” and recite the character's asinine catchphrase.

Joy

Review by Pamela Zoslov

Back in the '90s, I became addicted to home shopping TV channels. In hindsight it seems tacky, but as an over-thirty law student under crushing pressure, I found solace in the patter of the smooth, charismatic hosts hawking gold jewelry, fake diamonds (“Diamonique”), clothes and household gadgets, each piece of merchandise flattered by star-filtered lights and the caresses of the well-manicured presenters. I came to know the hosts and their stories — witty New York-bred Kathy Levine; Judy Crowell, briefly married to a rakish fellow host, who asked her for a divorce just before airtime; Lisa Mason, fashion-model gorgeous but charmingly self-effacing; David Venable, the handsome ex-news anchor whose Southern charm could coax the bark off a Magnolia tree.

The Big Wedding

Review by Pamela Zoslov

Everything about THE BIG WEDDING, a comedy written and directed by Justin Zackham, reeks of Hollywood cynicism, from the big-name casting (Robert De Niro, Diane Keaton, Susan Sarandon) to the title “People like big, they like weddings. (Waves cigar.) Call it 'Da Big Wedding.'”

Loosely adapted from the 2006 Swiss film Mon frère se marie, the movie has a familiar La Cage aux Folles premise: a family enacts a social charade to deceive prospective in-laws. In the original Swiss movie, a divorced couple and their alienated children fake familial happiness to deceive the mother of their Vietnamese foster son. The Hollywood version has DeNiro and Keaton as Don and Ellie, a long-divorced couple, pretend they're still married for the sake of the devoutly Catholic birth mother (Patricia Rae) of their Colombian-born adopted son Alejandro (played, via politically incorrect Central Casting, by British actor Ben Barnes). Apart from the chauvinism of portraying a Colombian woman as a rosary-fondling rustic named Madonna, the film sins against comedy by failing to develop its farcical theme. The direction is slack and listless: a climactic scene under the wedding reception tent, in which the characters hurl around vicious accusations and scandalous revelations, is so limp it feels like rehearsal outtakes.

Silver Linings Playbook

Review by Joseph Anthony

What happens when a man with suppressed bipolar disorder discovers his wife cheating on him with one of her coworkers?  

Director David O. Russell tries to answer this question in SILVER LININGS PLAYBOOK, his first film since the success of THE FIGHTER. Russell has become increasingly efficient in telling focused human stories about people who are relateable, but just a little different than the rest of us. In this case it's Pat Solitano (Bradley Cooper), a man whose life has been turned upside down by his adulterous wife, Nikki (Brea Bee). Upon the discovery on his wife’s affair, Pat beats the man she is cheating with within an inch of his life. This earns Pat eight months in a psychiatric ward and a restraining order against his wife and their former workplace, a school.

When Pat is released, he goes home to live with his mom (Jackie Weaver) and dad (Robert De Niro), but he doesn’t find any relief there. His father is a Philadelphia Eagles junky, and bets on them every week while simultaneously keeping up his superstitious behaviors. Meanwhile, Pat is determined to win his wife Nikki back. Everyone in Pat’s life, including his therapist (played hilariously by Anupam Kher) tries to get Pat to move on, while also controlling his anger. Pat has many triggers for his anger, but his wedding song is the worst of them all: it's the same song that was playing when he found his wife cheating on him.

Raging Bull (April 1st and 2nd at the Cleveland Cinematheque)

[RAGING BULL screens Friday April 1st at 9:05 p.m. and Satirday April 2nd at 7 p.m. at the Cleveland Cinematheque.]

Review by Charles Cassady Jr.

I don't like RAGING BULL.

Okay, April Fool! You been punked!... Hello? Are you okay? (checks reader pulse, shakes head grimly, pulls sheet over blog follower's corpse)... Dead of a heart attack induced by shock. Gee, I didn't mean to do that. Drops our readership considerably. In my mild defense, I wasn't half kidding. True, Martin Scorsese's RAGING BULL, right from its 1980s release, was embraced by critics better paid than I (which is all of them) as a classic, canonical, the best thing that ever could be, making plenty of Top Ten lists. Still, might I politely state that from my perspective it's just a tiny bit...overrated?

As every schoolboy knows, the feature is the biopic of boxing champion Jake LaMotta (Robert De Niro), middleweight title-holder from 1949 to 1951. He's depicted as a ferocious brawler who had a distinction of never getting knocked out in the ring. LaMotta is here a force of primal fury, a thug more so than an athlete. He discards his first wife to take as his teen bride a stereotypically 1940s-50s blonde right off a pulp-novel cover (Cathy Moriarty in a breakthrough role). His fast-talking, deal-making little brother Paulie (Joe Pesci in a breakthrough role), Jake's manager, may be the one guy looking out for Jake's welfare (if only to feather his own nest), but Joey's schemes nonetheless get Jake involved in a mobbed-up scandal in which the vicious battler must unwillingly `throw' a fight.