If you have seen “Dirty Grandpa,” the 2016 “comedy” starring Robert De Niro and Zac Efron, you’ve seen this movie. “The Comedian” stars De Niro playing Jackie Burke, an obnoxious, crazy uncle. Similar to “Dirty Grandpa,” De Niro delivers offensive and unnecessarily vulgar jokes to get laughs from a paid studio audience, but this time, he plays a washed-up comedian who has gone viral.
After getting assigned community service because of an assault charge, Jackie meets Harmony (Leslie Mann), a young woman with “daddy issues” who is also serving out community service sentence. Jackie wins her over with his rude personality and phallic jokes, which initially started as just a ruse to have sex with her. Shocker.
Change the title, the relative, the occupation and you will still have De Niro playing the exact same character lacking wit or substance.
To the movie’s defense, the writers tried to correct this exact criticism, which De Niro also received for his lack of development in “Dirty Grandpa.” This attempt was done by providing Jackie with a “troubled past” in an effort to draw out audience empathy for his character. However, the placement of these “moments” in the script was choppy and inserted at the most inappropriate times. The few times in the film where Jackie’s character development was displayed appropriately, they were almost always incomplete, leaving the audience infuriated.
This movie had the potential to be a comedy classic with big name comedians, such as Leslie Mann and Danny DeVito, starring in this film as well as guest appearances from several actual stand-up comedians such as Billy Crystal and Gilbert Gottfried. Mann’s and DeVito’s characters played significant roles in the film. While both are supporting characters under De Niro’s Jackie, their characters, though not properly developed, provided more laughs and entertainment than the actual comedian. Despite this, even they could not save the script or De Niro’s lackluster puns.
An hour into the film it becomes clear the plot can be developed no further, but the movie continues to drag on for another hour.
Toward the end, it becomes clear the screenwriters exhausted every offensive homophobic joke in the book. True to the dictionary definition, the excrements that follow are the writer’s attempts to take the dismissed waste matter and allow the final droppings to be Jackie jokes about feces. In a scene straight out of a third grade joke book, De Niro’s character alters Ella Fitzgerald’s jazz rendition of “Making Whoopie” into “Making Poopie.” In the words of playwright Samuel Beckett, this scene was “an ordure, from beginning to end” analogous to every joke in this movie.
The ending can be seen coming from a mile away and does nothing to save the film. There is no transition to indicate that the story is going to end save for bubbled type flashing across the screen with the words “8 years later…” and Jackie ending with a cliché that makes the audience roll their eyes.
De Niro is Hollywood royalty, but this movie is just one in a chain of recent disappointing films in which his performance was not up to the high standard expected of him. It’s almost as if “The Comedian” is De Niro playing himself because he, like his character Jackie, is taking gigs beneath his capabilities just to stay relevant. The difference is De Niro is still one of the most sought-after actors in Hollywood whose name and career continues to transcend generations. However, as “The Comedian” has shown, his name cannot carry or save an entire movie if the script and characters are not as developed as he is.
Save yourself the time and avoid this movie. If you are itching to see Robert De Niro play a bad-mannered relative, watch “Dirty Grandpa.” It’s the exact same story but shorter. So instead of wasting two hours of your life watching “The Comedian,” you only waste an hour and a half and can use the saved half-hour to watch Hot Knife compilations on YouTube.
“The Comedian” will hit theaters on Friday.
