It had a strong supporting cast who did an excellent job of mirroring the "Can you believe this guy?" that was on our faces.

It reminded us a lot of "Anchorman:the Legend of Ron Burgundy" and had a similar sort of humor.

Gore Vidal quoted Tennesse Williams in his book Palimpsest: " An artist dies two deaths, their creative one and then their real one". Sometimes, somewhere that reservoir of pain that enables one to laugh at the sheer absurdity of life somehow just dries up. Maybe it has something to do with becoming successful and then complacent. Or, maybe once the joke has been said once or twice it just no longer flies. But it sure seems comedians don't have a very long shelf life.

I was going to ask when steve (mark Twain winner)martin was ever funny but you answered my question with the one and only time : FLYDINI :

Second best martin tapdancing in Pennies from Heaven.

British comedies are funny.

When I heard they were remaking the Pink Panther, I had two words for the producers.

Alan Arkin.

A wonderful actor, a great actor, even. But in 1968 he tried to fill Peter Sellers' shoes in INSPECTOR CLOUSEAU (directed by Bud Yorkin), and the results were predictable. Despite a cast of English stalwarts to die for (including Frank Finlay, Beryl Reid, and Patrick Cargill), it was woefully unfunny.

Soon, I fear, we'll have another two words to warn people from attempting this character again.

Steve Martin.

(Although Geoffrey Rush did an excellent impersonation of Clouseau in the HBO Sellers biopic.)

Interesting that there's been no mention of Stephen Colbert,whose performances are by far the funniest in over a generation, or of Seinfeld, and little mention of Jon Stewart (lack of women cited is another discussion). These men are in their forties, but (Colbert and Stewart) just getting better and better. They are both clearly happy men who use their sincere and discomforting political anger as their artistic medium, and seem to enjoy relying on their live audiences. One difference from some of the other comedians discussed is that these two are unusually smart, quick-quippers with a firm philosophical grounding, and their comedy is more wit than schtick (ditto for Rob Corddry and a couple of other Daily performers). Could it be that the trend of critical audiences is actually becoming more intellectually demanding, even though the paying ones still pony up for slapstick?

(Stewart and Colbert have also chosen, or even invented, performance settings that serve them very, very well, and chosen excellent writers. I haven't seen either of their movie performances, but Stewart's book was a big disappointment.)

None of these three professional funny men were ever A grade, like Groucho Marx, Charlie Chaplin, Ernie Kovacs, or even Steve Allen. I got some laughs from all three, but it didn't take long before they became redundant, formulaic, and tiresome.

Albert Brooks, of course, ran out of material first. Woody Allen's creepiness crept in around the time he became America's most notorious "short eyes." With Steve Martin, I think his biggest problem is his familiarity. He's a guy who tries to be funny, rather than actually being funny.

It's worth mentioning that Robin Williams is even more tiresome, a relentless ham who forces his humor in every situation. Jim Carrey is tiresome for the same reason. What this all points out is the great difficulty in being a comedian. I suspect that if one were to spend an evening filled with laughs, a night out with Goldie Hawn, Bette Midler, or Jack Nicholson would be a hoot. I would love to have been a fly on the wall when Nicholson and Warren Beatty were smoking it up in their younger days.

The object on William's nose in *Patch Adams* is part of an ear wax removing system. Giving an enema with something that size would take all day. I also think the movie better than average and Mr. Williams did rather well in the part of Patch Adams (who resembles Dick Van Dyke more in terms of body type). I wouldn't classify the movie a comedy, but more a drama with comedic moments.

This may sound trite or simplistic, but simple aging may have a lot to do with this phenomenon. Very few artists are able to sustain a high level of output, no matter what their particular medium. I could name several contemporaries of these men (not comedians) whose star has decidely faded over the last 15 years. Scorsese, Coppola, DePalma -- none have produced work that approaches their very best when they were at their peak. Same thing in music: Springsteen, Elvis Costello, U2, etc. And, as Stephanie points out, comedy may be the most difficult form of all.

(I do not include Adam Sandler because he is relatively young and egregiously not funny.)

While I dislike South Park, I think it is funny. Beavis and Butthead were inspired and made me laugh harder than nearly anything (thanks Mike Judge), Mike Myers is still funny as hell. All these things have good, sharp writing in common.

also, I look to Europe for funny movies. One of the funniest I have seen in many years was the Fifth Element, granted it was sci fi, but it was meant to be satiric and worked very well.

Comparing Steve Martin with Albert Brooks with Woody Allen is really comparing apples and oranges and bananas. Martin is obviously using the “one for them, one for me” strategy—only the most indiscriminant of his fans are expected to pay to see Cheaper By the Dozen or The Pink Panther, so there is really no reason to even bother reviewing them. Albert Brooks is not really a comedian, he’s an actor whose best roles happen to have been in comedies (the distinction is the same as between, say, Groucho Marx and John Barrymore). Broadcast News, for instance, is about serious people in an absurd situation, the humor built around complex characters, not comic personae. With “Looking for Comedy,” Brooks tried to take on current events and ended up over his head; a regrettable failure perhaps, but a noble effort, and not at all indicative of a career in decline.

Now, for the hundredth time, about Woody…

I happened to find Match Point one of the most discomforting movies of 2005, and, for that very reason, one of the best. From the awkward juxtaposition of Italian opera and Buckingham Palace guards to the final scene with the murderer’s happy extended family and newborn baby, a truly nauseating existential dread grows on the viewer. Any hint of comedy, even an appearance by Allen in a serious role, would have broken the Doestoyevskian spell.

Ms. Zacharek, who obviously prefers Allen’s early, funny pictures, complains, without bothering to give evidence, of Match Point’s “dunderheaded moralism.” But in reality the film is less about any specific moral code than it is an examination of the amorality of it’s narrator, and how flawed but basically decent people, both in the film and in the audience, can become ensnared by his self-exculpatory rationalizations. I don’t know what Allen’s opinion of Doestoyevsky is—his main character can’t read Crime and Punishment without a crib, and even then, all he seems to get out of it is the inspiration for a murder scheme, after which his victims come back to try to haunt his conscience, but are almost comically unsuccessful. We do know what Nabokov thought Doestoyevsky to be—an overpraised, illiterate, reactionary fanatic. Nabokov’s response to Crime and Punishment was Lolita (a title that always seems to come to mind when Allen is the topic of conversation), the amorality of the unreliable narrator of which is strikingly similar to Match Point’s.

Allen’s movies tend to polarize critics in strange ways—instead of champions and detractors, he attracts critics who try to divide his work into masterpieces and failures. While I would agree that Manhattan is extremely good and Anything Else is mostly flat, for the most part I tend toward the opinion that Allen’s good films are not as great, nor are his poorer films nearly so bad, as everybody tries to tell me. His dialogue will always strike me as a little too mannered and stagebound for the cinema, his actors projecting to the audience instead of conversing with each other. But if his wit occasionally sours, and if his work is never quite realistic enough to be true art, he never fails to be inventive and provocative—and that even goes for the “indefensible” Melinda and Melinda.