It's difficult to completely pan "The King of Comedy," but it's also nearly impossible to recommend. This ambivalence derives foremost from its legendary collaborators. De Niro and Scorsese helped to creatively reinvigorate Hollywood in the 1970s with "Mean Streets" and "Raging Bull," and it seems impossible that such an illustrious team could have managed so profound a misstep. And yet despite its talent and its ambition,"The King of Comedy" is nonetheless an artistic failure. De Niro stars as Rupert Pupkin, a manic, unstable New Yorker who fixates on stardom as a comedian as his path toward redemption from obscurity and loneliness. Pupkin has little talent and even less charm, but has an insistent perky patter that he uses to overwhelm others into seeing him as the giant talent he imagines himself to be. Jerry Lewis plays Jerry Langford, a Johnny Carson-like talk show host that Pupkin fixates on as a means of starting his comedy career. Sandra Bernhard plays a psychotic, obsessed Langford fan who has built a vaguely defined friendship with Pupkin over their shared Langford fixation.
The theme of the film is the power of fame and celebrity in American culture and its perverse effects on those who seek it and those who have it. But the story never quite commits to how it wants to present that message. An uncomfortable mix of satire, drama, and joyless comedy undermine the message. In "Network," the sheer vicious scale of the satire succeeds in communicating a similar premise about fame, mass media, and culture. But "King" shuffles along never quite rising to any great height, only succeeding making the viewer uneasy and ambivalent. De Niro does an admirable job portraying Pupkin, but never demonstrates any depth to the character other than a type of monochromatic manic naiveté. Bernhard's performance is loud, obnoxious, and narrow, giving all this signs of being almost entirely improvised. Unfortunately, instead of improvisation giving her character an immediacy and freshness it often is mere shouting and raving within a very narrow compass. Lewis in a very quiet and subtle way gives the strongest performance as Langford, a man trapped by his fame, who in many ways is as lonely as Pupkin, despite his achievement of everything Pupkin longs for.
The theme of the film is the power of fame and celebrity in American culture and its perverse effects on those who seek it and those who have it. But the story never quite commits to how it wants to present that message. An uncomfortable mix of satire, drama, and joyless comedy undermine the message. In "Network," the sheer vicious scale of the satire succeeds in communicating a similar premise about fame, mass media, and culture. But "King" shuffles along never quite rising to any great height, only succeeding making the viewer uneasy and ambivalent. De Niro does an admirable job portraying Pupkin, but never demonstrates any depth to the character other than a type of monochromatic manic naiveté. Bernhard's performance is loud, obnoxious, and narrow, giving all this signs of being almost entirely improvised. Unfortunately, instead of improvisation giving her character an immediacy and freshness it often is mere shouting and raving within a very narrow compass. Lewis in a very quiet and subtle way gives the strongest performance as Langford, a man trapped by his fame, who in many ways is as lonely as Pupkin, despite his achievement of everything Pupkin longs for.