Real Life (1979, Albert Brooks) (Patreon)

64/100

Second viewing, last seen sometime between 1986 and 1990. (I'm pretty confident that Lost in America, which I watched on video, was my introduction to Brooks. And I believe that I'd caught up with both this film and Modern Romance by the time Defending Your Life came out.) In almost every respect save for its length, this is an extension of the shorts that Brooks made for SNL a few years earlier...and the thing is, I understand why that association was short-lived. Each of those shorts is witty and clever and amusing, but rarely, I submit, are they actually LOL funny. And I find that the same is largely true of Real Life (especially compared to Modern Romance, one of the funniest movies ever made, rating 90). When Brooks plays "himself"—as opposed to a fictional character who conforms so precisely to his persona that the guy really might as well be named Albert instead of Robert or David or Daniel or whatever—and takes "narcissistically bungling the movie you're currently watching" as his comic subject, there's a theoretical meta-layer between me and the gags, such that I often end up thinking "That's quite funny" rather than actually laughing. Perfect example here is Warren accidentally killing the horse on the operating table, a bit that doesn't transcend the obvious  conceptual joke: vet makes fatal error while distracted by cameras. We could've predicted that much, and the scene doesn't unfold in a creative or inspired way. Then the aftermath is basically Lost in America's Desert Inn scene, an all-time classic...except Brooks is playing Garry Marshall's role and Charles Grodin—Charles Grodin!—isn't given much opportunity to be hilariously desperate. (I haven't seen oh just for example any of the Beethoven films, but this might well be the least funny Grodin has ever been in a comedy that I have seen. He's not bad, he's just never allowed to get out of first gear. Brooks is the focus at all times.) 

You know what is funny? The cameras are funny. Figures from Among Us suddenly appearing in the frame throughout the entire movie is funny. It's not just the getup, either—the fact that it for some reason needs to be operated with both hands inserted below the "ears" never stops looking sublimely ridiculous, and Brooks-as-director (not "Brooks"-as-"director") does a superlative job of keeping the cameramen out of view toward the beginning of most scenes, so that we see them unexpectedly when they move to find a better angle. You'd think this would eventually get old, but it never does. And of course there are plenty of strong one-liners, often spoken drily as voiceover narration (after Warren kills the horse: "The operation was over at 11:45, well ahead of schedule") or totally thrown away ("I know a great Mexican-like restaurant"). It's always a pleasure to watch Brooks do his toxically self-regarding thing. Perfect ending, too. I like the film. But do I consider it to be on remotely the same level of comedic genius as his next two features would achieve? With apologies to my pal Scott Tobias, who's foaming at the mouth right now, I do not. He was still finding his way at this point; Modern Romance, where he stopped directly addressing the viewer as if movies were just an extension of stand-up or a talk-show appearance, is where it all comes together. And while I'm struggling to fit this neatly into what's become a fairly cogent thesis (if I do say so myself), Real Life also isn't especially prescient regarding reality TV—what ultimately scuttles the project isn't manufactured melodrama or colliding egos, but adverse publicity from Dr. Cleary's book about it and the subsequent local-news coverage (which seems very '70s). I don't watch this movie and see present-day programming in embyronic form, and that feels like a fail. But I just now remembered Brooks repeatedly offering to go take a shower and remove his clown makeup, since the kids aren't home, and started lightly chuckling again, so maybe who cares.