The King of Comedy (1983)

Socially odd, dimwitted and given to bouts of fantasizing, Robert De Niro gives a dazzling performance as an insensitive nobody who isn’t afraid to act the way he does so convincingly, because he doesn’t know better. His character is the kind of guy who thinks he is special just because he wears a tie and has a few autographs of stars making him extremely unrealistic about his expectations. ’The King of Comedy’ is a movie that builds and builds, but doesn’t explode or need to. Think of it as the the lost story of Travis Bickle if he tried to get a job as a standup comedian. The odds would certainly be against him especially if it invovled arm twisting his way into the television network. Jerry Lewis plays his idol who, in an attempt to get rid of the De Niro character at the start of the film, asks him to visit his office with a demo tape, not knowing that the person will take every word of his literally.

There is a brilliant scene where Jerry Lewis (re-Christened in the movie as Jerry Langford) that shows how difficult it might be for a celebrity to go out and try to be normal. The film is so good owing to a strong script and superb performances but enters the realm of brilliance because of the moody day dreaming sequences that just start and end without us being able to differentiate between what part of it was really a fantasy and what part was the reality within the film. As a viewer I was so involved in the character that De Niro played that I was frustrated by how everyone was able to overpower him, from the security guards he met to the numerous secretaries he had to go through in order to meet his superstar comedian idol. Social comedy thats very black and unsettlingly lifelike. Scorcese makes a cameo as, what else, a movie director!

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