MR. SATURDAY NIGHT
A film review by Mark Shneyder
Copyright 1992 Mark Shneyder
I attended the press screening (courtesy of a friend who works for a local radio station) for MR. SATURDAY NIGHT last night.
First of all, don't go by the zillion of ads on TV that boast quotes from all the different movie critics proclaiming this picture as a guaranteed Oscar biggie. It's not an Oscar movie but Billy Crystal does deserve a lot of recognition for telling the story of thousands of stand-up comics, unlike Billy Crystal himself, who never make it big or who never make it period. It is also a story about what a cruel thing show business could be and how a person can be consumed by it and forget about a thing called life.
Buddy Young, Jr. (played by Crystal) is shown through four decades as a very bitter, selfish, career-driven comic who forgets about the people that are closest to him--his wife, his kids, and his brother who manages him for some fifty years. You really wonder why his wife never left him because there is just nothing affectionate or warm about the guy, and why his brother never walked out on him after being Buddy's constant target of sarcastic abuse filled with meanness for all these years.
Second, Billy Crystal is not able to carry this movie. I'm the biggest Crystal fan but this wasn't an Oscar performance by any means. There are only two scenes that were really powerful--Buddy visiting his 91-year-old mom at a nursing home and his eulogy at her memorial service. Otherwise, after a hilarious opening scene in a family living room, the movie just drags (I looked at my watch 3 times :-)).
This is a not a happy funny movie. This is a movie about an unhappy guy who tried to be funny. There are few good funny bits such as when Buddy meets a Hollywood producer (played by Ron Silver) to get a part in a movie. (The imitation of a reporter in a basketball locker room was a riot!) But overall, no belly-ache laughs and not a single joke that made people laugh for too long....
My rating : 2 stars out of 4.
-Mark
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