The King of Comedy is my #3 Martin Scorsese picture behind Goodfellas and Raging Bull. This is a brilliant black comedy, with an aggressively funny and hugely obnoxious performance from Robert De Niro. Jerry Lewis is utterly brilliant here, all dead pan and stern seriousness, completely unimpressed with De Niro’s idiotic pestering and absurd shenanigans. Merely thinking about this film makes me burst out laughing. The bit with Sandra Bernhard clearing the table with Lewis tied up in tape – screamingly funny. De Niro doing his asinine routine in the basement of his family house with his mother yelling at him to be quiet – it’s the stuff of instant comic legend.
It’s appalling and sad that nobody gave a squat about this film upon its initial release aside from a likely handful of astute critics and viewers. There’s something positively diseased about The King of Comedy, and the way that Scorsese seems to be relishing in the madness makes the film all the more bracing and scalding and engrossing. Scorsese and screenwriter Paul D. Zimmerman painfully examine hero and celebrity worship, the false sense of importance that some people feel in their lives, and the overriding obsession with becoming famous that sits inside of so many individuals.
The King of Comedy, in a weirdly prescient manner, acted as a precursor to some forms of reality TV, blurring the lines between true stardom and mere infamy, further perpetuating Andy Warhol’s prophetic notion of everyone’s ability to have “15 minutes of fame.” Everything about this movie works; you just have to decide if you want to expose yourself to damaged human goods. De Niro and Bernhard are looney tunes in this film, but the scariest, worst type of looney tunes imaginable – the sort of people who don’t realize that they’re sociopaths, even after they’ve committed their acts of transgressive lunacy.
Audiences and critics weren’t expecting this sort of caustic, dry humor from Scorsese in 1982, especially coming directly after Raging Bull, and the film died a quick death at the box office and wasn’t as critically respected as it should have been. Thankfully, over the years, The King of Comedy has taken on cult classic status, and easily stands as one of Scorsese’s best and most underappreciated efforts (I also feel that Kundun is woefully unsung, and The Age of Innocence warrants reconsideration, hopefully by The Criterion Collection). I can’t help but bust a gut every time I see this unhinged masterwork of intensely disturbing hilarity.
The Kings of Comedy can be purchased on Amazon HERE
Review by Nick Clement
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The King of Comedy
Summary
A brilliant black comedy, with an aggressively funny and hugely obnoxious performance from Robert De Niro.
