Letters to the Editor
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About comedians
Here I go, ranting on about things I don't know about... I have found a home. :D
Most funny people, comedians especially, are wounded, tortured souls who feel a compelling desire to be noticed. Early on, they notice being funny is much more rewarding than being a sad, tortured windbag, so funny it is. Also, funny people get beat up less.
When successful comedians get older, they feel it is okay to finally show in inner-wounded widdle person, which, for the most part, is very unfunny. It is also unpracticed, as it was kept bottled up. Therefore, not as good. Add that to the fact that we want them to still be funny... bad news.
As for Steve Martin... I never really found him all that funny. His SNL material was for stoners. The Jerk was funny... if you were stoned. Some of his lighter comedies were okay, and everything I have seen him in trying to be serious is kind of painful. His banjo playing is, however, exquisite.
Steve Martin is at his least funny when he tries to do anything that involves an accent or ethnicity (My Blue Heaven, Pink Panther, that movie with Queen Latifa). My Blue Heaven is 90 minutes of my life I'll never get back... woe is me indeed.
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How can you talk about comedians without mentioning Will Ferrel ??????
The Legend of Ron Burgundy is a great comedy.... and Ferrel's short video on Bush giving a global warming speech is also ... great.
Don't tell us about the has been's.... who are the new guys?
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Clouseau's essence
No one so far writing about the new Pink Panther movie seems to have a clue as to the true genius of the original. Or, to be more specific, the genius of the first two Blake Edwards’ films. After that things went largely off the rails.
Clouseau wants to be Cary Grant, and is utterly incapable of it. Bumbling is his essence, his soul. All of the small acts of aplomb, of polish, of savoir faire, of suave sophistication, that were second nature to a Cary Grant, Clouseau will attempt, and he will fail - every time. It isn’t that he will run afoul of some vast, complicated piece of machinery – a mistake made so often in the later films - he can’t bring off opening a door (or a drawer), reaching for a cigarette, or, memorably, spinning a globe. He longs to do the simplest of things with the assured grace of a Cary Grant, and fails at every turn, often with glorious comic results. Quintessential Clouseau: in A Shot in the Dark he is wrestled to the ground by a rack of pool cues.
The longing to look good in the many minor, but constant, endeavors of our lives is something we all live with and hope to survive with at least some measure of accomplishment. They say comedy is someone else’s pain. Clouseau does not need to suffer the spectacular thump of a great prat fall; he suffers instead the thousand humiliations of small acts gone amuck, and so helps exorcise our own anxieties about these passages of daily life. Again and again, he sails out with eager confidence, only to have his face rubbed in it once more. The Don Quixote of trivial quests.
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Not that bad
I went to see The Pink Panther more of less expecting it to be bad, given all the terrible reviews. But I am a mentor for a young girl, and on our outing that day, she chose that movie over a few other possibilities. While I can't say the movie was great or as hilariously funny as the original, it certainly did have some funny moments. I would have rather sat through that movie than through some movies I've hated that critics raved about. Some of the humor was sophmoric, but so are some of the bits on "The Daily Show." I don't think the movie nor Steve Martin deserve such derision.
appletree