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Friday, February 10, 2006 12:00 AM

When good comedians go bad

Remember when Steve Martin, Albert Brooks and Woody Allen were funny? What on earth happened to our favorite funnymen?
By Stephanie Zacharek

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  • Friday, February 10, 2006 06:37 AM

    Out of touch with the funny

    This has been one of my ongoing peeves with comedians-made-big: they cease to be funny the moment that they're co-opted into the machine.

    Eddie Murphy? Not funny since Raw.

    Chris Rock? Increasingly nonfunny, and now he has a TV series (that he literally gets to phone in).

    Steve Martin? Denis Leary? Ray Romano? Kevin James? Brett Butler? Roseanne? The list goes on.

    They all have one thing in common: the moment that they hit it big they stopped performing in front of live audiences.

    Not one of them has had to adapt his act for changing times and changing tastes from the moment that they acheived "success". Thus they cease to be relevant and daring and risky and breathtaking, and dammit, funny.

    Get back on the road for a few months out of every few years, guys. Remember the funny, then bring it back to your movies and TV shows. Stop coasting.

    —Eric Tompkins

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