Misery Loves Comedy

Note: This review is from 2015

Film review by Steve Bennett

You might remember Kevin Pollak from the 2005 film The Aristocrats, in which he impersonated Christopher Walken telling a version of the infamously filthy joke.

But his own documentary, Misery Loves Comedy, is a much flatter affair despite – or perhaps because of – the vast number of great comics he interviewed. Almost 60 of them in a 94-minute film, just over a minute and a half each.

It is, therefore, a relentless stream of talking heads, many of them pretty impressive names such as Tom Hank, Larry David, Judd Apatow, Jimmy Fallon and Amy Schumer. Pollak certainly has an impressive Rolodex.

But the cumulative effect of which is to form a virtual composite every comic, a babble of voices all saying similar things about stand-up being a drug, a way of the socially insecure being able to control a conversation and a soul-crushing experience when it goes wrong. That the vast majority of them are white men aged 40 or over adds to that feeling of sameness, especially compared to the The Aristocrats which celebrated the diversity of approaches in comedy.

There are some stand-outs. When comics such as Jim Jefferies and Maria Bamford make disarmingly honest comments about their mental issues in hints and the film that COULD have been made. Likewise, Freddy Prinze Jr is revelatory discussing coming to terms with the suicide of his father, also a comedian, and Marc Maron is always full of angsty self-analytical revelations.

But these are exceptions in a film doesn't hang together. Despite the attempts of rather arbitrary chapter headings to try to give it form, the documentary has no proper agenda or drive, just a parade of superficial soundbites.

Stephen Merchant's recalling the time he said something embarrassingly inappropriate to Steve Coogan when they met is a funny chat-show anecdote, but unlinked to anything else. As it is with Christopher Guest showing off a classroom ventriloquism trick that got him in trouble, or Rob Brydon explaining how he turns around a bad gig by talking much slower, a confidence trick to make it look as if he's enjoying himself, so couldn't possibly be dying up there.

The alleged 'tears of a clown' premise of the film that you have to be down to be funny is late coming, and answered with an inconclusive shrug. Some say it is, some say definitely not, and most say misery is part of everyone's life, comics aren't special.

Misery Loves Comedy is certainly not for comedy muggles, but even hardened nerds are likely to be disappointed, for the cacophony of voices makes it hard to learn much. Perhaps Pollak couldn't bear to cut any of his famous friends, but he probably should have – for you'll learn more about a comedian's make-up from a single episode of Stuart Goldsmith's Comedians' Comedian podcast than you will from this jumble.

• Misery Loves Comedy is officially released tomorrow, although we've been unable to find any cinemas showing it.