That Dick Van Dyke is a talented physical comedian is beyond doubt. All one has to do is travel over to YouTube and watch this delightfully silly montage.
That, even with all of this talent, he and co-writer/director Carl Reiner were unable to produce even a passable tip of the hat to silent screen comedy, is nothing short of bizarre. To be honest, “The Comic” plays more like a middle finger to Chaplin, Keaton and company than anything else.
Van Dyke plays the miserable Billy Bright, the recently deceased king of silent comedy. The film opens at his funeral. That’s right – Bright is dead, but not quiet. He narrates his own funeral from beyond the grave.
Nothing in this film works. Bright narrating and slagging his own funeral doesn’t work. The not even close to convincing old age makeup doesn’t work. Deciding to make Billy Bright a one dimensional a-hole doesn’t work. The faux silent films don’t work. The production design doesn’t work. Nothing works.
I have to admit something – I started fast forwarding about half-way through. That is how bad TC is. Yes, you’d have a point if you criticized me for writing a review of a movie that I didn’t even finish. If you feel like giving me the middle finger, that’s fine. Still, when a movie is this bad, it becomes a struggle to stomach even a few minutes of it, let alone 90.
I just don’t get it. Why go to the trouble of trying to recreate the look and feel of silent screen slapstick comedy if your going to fill it with one dumb, unimaginative, incoherent gag after another? To watch TC, you’d think that all Chaplin and Keaton did was take a comically large mallet and bop each of their co-stars on the head from the start to the finish of each of their films.
One need only watch the boxing scene from “City Lights” (1931) to marvel at the ingenious way Chaplin exploits the convention and physical elements of a boxing match in order to create hilarity. Once again, go on over to YouTube and be amazed by the genius on display in that sequence. Seriously, if you want to see silent screen slapstick comedy at it’s finest, watch Chaplin and avoid the laughless and inept “The Comic.”
Marvel at the way Chaplin choreographs the movement of his opponent, the referee and his Tramp character in the ring. He turns it into an absurd dance where his own character’s cowardice forces him to use his wits to survive. Chaplin carefully builds and builds this sequence, one ridiculous riff on the sport of boxing after another, until it becomes a masterclass in the art of slapstick comedy.
He’s not content with just one gag, but a series of repetitions and variations until he’s used the space in the ring, the physical positioning of the three bodies in it, the defensive technique of hugging your opponent to prevent him from throwing a punch and, most hilariously, the bell to create a unique and remarkably creative and extremely funny sequence.
Chaplin succeeds because most of the gags – clever as they may be – flow from the Tramp’s character. If the Tramp is anything, he’s a survivor. And, from film to film, from comedy sequence to comedy sequence, the Tramp survives by his wits and by his willingness to fight dirty. We don’t mind that and, in fact, cheer it on because he is always fighting someone or something with more power than him – whether that power is physical, hierarchical or financial.
Sadly, the feeling you get watching Van Dyke and Reiner’s recreations of silent slapstick comedy two reelers is that they don’t take the form that seriously. That couldn’t have been their intention, but that’s the feeling their fake two reelers give off.
“Love, Honor and Oh Boy” sees Billy Bright and his new bride’s celebratory walk out of the church turn into a crazed shoe tossing fight. It makes little sense and offers zero laughs.
“Saved by a Sap” involves a kidnapping, a sack and a boulder. Though the scene makes some sense, it is played so broadly that it comes off as strictly amateur hour. Add to that its many ‘bop on the head’ gags and predictable pratfalls and the result is lots of silliness and a definite deficit of laughs.
In “Main Street Menace,” Bright goes out for a walk. First, though, he puts on his jacket. That jacket is hanging on a coat rack by the door. For reasons unknown, he slips into his jacket by first backing up against the wall on which the coat rack rests. With his jacket now on, Bright walks out his front door – taking the coat rack with him. As Bright walks about town, he becomes that ‘menace’ suggested by the title by accidentally smacking his fellow citizens in the head with either end of the coat rack.
This gag is a variation on a very old slapstick nugget that usually employs a two-by-four or a ladder. But, here, instead, Van Dyke and Reiner use a coat rack and, by doing so, raise a few questions. Who puts their coat on this way? How does Bright not know that he’s carrying a coat rack on his shoulders? Wouldn’t he feel the weight of it? Devoid of plausibility, the gag has zero chance of succeeding.
Then there’s “Dr. Jerk and Mr. Hyde.” After drinking the potion and turning into Mr. Hyde, Bright is somehow able to turn back into Dr. Jerk, whenever he wants to, so he can fool his wife into thinking he’s still his normal old self. So, the potion works, but only if you want it to? Again, it just doesn’t make any sense.
If it sounds like I’m applying far too serious critical standards to the silent slapstick comedy form, then it pays to remember that Chaplin was originally employed by Mack Sennett. Once the most successful producer of silent screen slapstick comedies, Sennett was dedicated to filling each of his chaotic two reelers with exactly the type of broad, unimaginative gags that Van Dyke and Reiner feature in their own fake two reelers.
The reason Chaplin left Sennett’s company was because he knew he could do better and he did. Not only did he do better, but he turned a once sloppy and chaotic mess of barely coherent chase scenes and pie fights into an art form.
Fighting for creative freedom, and winning it, allowed Chaplin to take his time, think carefully through every scene in every picture and produce comedies that continue to be mentioned alongside the finest film achievements this still young artform has ever seen.
While I didn’t expect genius from TC – that would be unfair – I did expect a worthy tribute to an artform that brought the world so much laughter during the very early days of the moving picture.
Instead, I got a disaster of a movie.
If you want to see worthy tributes to silent screen slapstick, watch the films of Jacques Tati, Peter Sellers and Jerry Lewis. Or, watch an episode of the live action TV show, “Mr. Bean.” It’s star, Rowan Atkinson, delights in a series of episodes overflowing with brilliant little bits of visual comedy.
