The King of Comedy

Audience Reviews

View More

Albus W Apr 19, 2019 I can say with confidence that this is the best satire that I have ever seen. Now, Starship Troopers (1997) and American Beauty (1999), unfortunately tainted by Kevin Spacey, would also rank highly on my hypothetical ranking of satirical films but I think that The King of Comedy nails the entertainment industry and people's relationship to celebrity in a way that few other films do. After having seen Raging Bull (1980) I thought that there was no way that De Niro could top that performance but here he is even more hopeless and desperate and yet in some ways the perfect embodiment of the American dream, he is very different but equally good in this role and the lack of attention that this film receives is criminal. Rupert Pupkin, Robert De Niro, is an aspiring stand-up comedian obsessed with talk show host Jerry Langford, Jerry Lewis, whom he is able to meet one night after a taping of the show. His obsession only grows worse and he continuously pursues Langford in the hopes of appearing on his television show despite the star's obvious lack of interest. Helping him in his pursuit is his wealthy but equally mentally unstable friend Masha, Sandra Bernhard, who harbors romantic feelings for Langford. He is unfettered in his pursuit and continues chasing his dreams through a series of increasingly more terrifying attempts but his horrible acts appear to have only positive outcomes, at least from what we see which may or may not be his delusions. The reason that it worked so well for me is that it was able to make you feel intensely uncomfortable but also to see how little people care about the person behind the celebrity and how willing people are to commit horrible acts just to get a piece of it. Unlike The Player (1992) which left me utterly cold I was horrified throughout the running time of this film as we see an innocent man get tortured so that a maniac can have one night of stardom. The scenes in which De Niro is fantasizing about serving as a talk show host alongside Langford are particularly terrifying as the dialogue resembles the tone of a late night talk show and the various gags that Pupkin imagines feel as though they could be ripped right out of the Late Late Show. His final comedy routine is also perfectly tailored to the style of a late night comic on a family friendly TV show, his jokes aren't particularly funny but they are referential and they sound like something that Jimmy Fallon, ugh, would spew. The audience eats up this routine however, in the way that middle Americans appear to love Fallon, and Pupkin is a strange success a fiction that doesn't feel so far from the truth. This â~believability' allowed me to cringe throughout but also to understand what the film was trying to say about the shallowness of the entertainment industry. All of the performances are just wonderful and as I have already mentioned how great De Niro I will now expound on why Bernhard and Lewis are just terrific. Bernhard plays a completely mad woman and she makes you believe it, when she is discussing her mental illness with Langford we get the sense that this is a woman with many, many mental issues and that Langford is just a person she can take her issues out on. Her rambling style of speech, slurred words and ability to jump from being in a fevered frenzy to being eerily calm lend her character a fearsome unpredictability and make her a worthy sidekick to De Niro. Lewis is great as a pragmatic, scared but successful comic and you feel sick for him as a crazed individual chooses him as a victim. He is particularly good when being tortured by Bernhard and De Niro as his bespectacled eyes betray his fear. Diahnne Abbott, De Niro's wife at the time of filming, is also good as De Niro's girlfriend who is terribly humiliated when she is brought to Langford's holiday home under the pretense of a vacation then informed that her boyfriend is not wanted and her shock at his success later in the film mirrors the audience reaction. It is again a travesty that De Niro and Bernhard received almost no attention for their brilliant work in this film. I would certainly recommend this film, not because it is fun but because it really comments on the nature of fame and the fickleness of the industry and the public at large. Pupkin's last line in his stand-up routine "Tomorrow you'll know I wasn't kidding and you'll all think I'm crazy. But I figure it this way: better to be king for a night, than a schmuck for a lifetime" is a criticism of the dangerous ideology of the entertainment industry itself. This is his fourth greatest film because it analyses existential, social and political issues whilst being terrifyingly deadpan. See more

George W Nov 13, 2018 This film was great.

Poe S Sep 3, 2018 A fantastic DeNiro and Scorsese collaboration

Aug 3, 2018 Best film Scorsese has made so far

Harry R Aug 3, 2018 An unsettling, underrated and for a very long time misunderstood Scorsese film that benefits from excellent performances by De Niro, Lewis and Bernhard, and it is its cynical ending that elevates it to the level of brilliant satire about the power of sensationalism in our times. See more

Ron W Jun 26, 2018 This is a great film with a nice performance by Robert De Niro. This is a dark comedy though and not an all out comedy. Scorsese inputs his styles and let De Niro do his job as the bumbling simpleton. Out of Scorsese's filmography many tend to oversee his mid 80s work like After Hours and this film. These are examples of the skills of a great filmmaker. His partnership with the lead actor was at its height here.(An underrated Martin Scorsese film). See more

Read all reviews

The King of Comedy

My Rating

Read More Read Less WRITE A REVIEW EDIT REVIEW POST RATING