Punchline (1988)
Grade: 56
"Punchline" is a drama about stand-up comics. They want to become stars, but their dreams are often reduced to making it through the next gig.
Lilah (Sally Fields) is housewife by day, stand-up comic by night. The movie opens with her buying jokes, as covertly as if buying drugs.
She performs at a nightclub as part of a lineup of comics. (Look for Damon Wayans as one of the troop.) Fields is not a very good comic. Her jokes aren't funny, she's nervous, and can't handle hecklers. She also faces problems at the home front. Her husband (John Goodman) doesn't support her new career, and her three young daughters are a handful.
Another comic who performs at the club is Steven (Tom Hanks) a medical student who flunks college when he can't remember the word for rectum during an oral exam. Tom is an excellent comic and has a bright future, but has yet to break the news to his father who wants him to be an open-heart surgeon like himself.
Fields begins to follow Hanks around, pestering him to learn why he is so much better as a comic than she. When he learns she is broke, he at first disdains her, then for some reason decides to help her. Under his guidance, she is transformed into a funny comedian. This story line is hard to swallow: Fields is more believable as a flying nun than a hilarious comic.
Goodman wants his wife to entertain business clients, who are church pastors, to demonstrate his family values. Pressed for time after hanging with Hanks, Fields must dress up and cook a fancy dinner. The dinner goes well until one of the bratty daughters tells a dirty joke.
Hanks learns that a network talent scout is considering putting him on television, a chance at the big time. He tries to hide this from the other comics to no avail. One night, he is told that a network bigwig is in the audience, but the man in the suit turns out to be his father. Hanks has a nervous breakdown on stage, blabbering about his relationship with his dad and how fellow med students taunted him for squeamishness.
Hanks later hits on Fields, another unlikely story line. She rejects him. His reaction is to do an imitation of Gene Kelly in "Singin' In The Rain" while Fields gapes at him.
The talent scout tells Hanks that there is to be an audition between the comics with the winner going on Carson. Fields has them rolling in the aisles. Everyone knows that Hanks is the better comic, but he is self-destructive, mocking the judges and bigwigs. He recovers, and by the end of his routine everyone is laughing. Fields wins the contest due to Hanks bad politics. But she refuses the prize in order to return to her loving family. Hanks is then the winner.
The moral is that everyone has a place in life that must be accepted. Fields is a housewife not a comic, Hanks a comic not a doctor.
http://members.tripod.com/~Brian_Koller/movies.html
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