The Man with Two Brains
       
Director: Carl Reiner
Year: 1983
Rating: 7.0
Steve Martin returns to silliness in this Carl Reiner directed film. Martin's whole shtick as a stand-up comedian before going into films was to make the audience laugh by being idiotic - the arrow through the head routine - and it worked wonderfully well. He took this with him to his hit film, The Jerk, but then upped his game to the wonderful parody of noir in Dead Men Don't Wear Plaid and the sour Depression musical Pennies from Heaven. I think both of those are brilliant, so it is surprising that he went back to bonkers comedy. That became a hallmark of his career - an ability to go from serious to mid-brow comedy and then low-brow humor. This is as low as humor can get. Not a serious moment in it. And damn, it is funny. Every scene has a few laughs embedded in it. He is funny and Kathleen Turner is happy to play with her image as a sex bomb - and she is a sex bomb here. Even if she is a malicious psychopath. Her finger sucking abilities may have contributed to Global Warming.



She is an unrepentant gold-digger trying to kill her first wealthy husband by being cruel to him. It is working till he tells her that he changed the will and she is getting nothing. She runs out into the street and gets whacked by a car driven by Martin. He fortunately happens to be the preeminent brain doctor in the world and is able to save her with his unscrew the head technology. As she lies in a coma, he falls in love with her - and her finger sucking ability. She immediately sizes up the situation and sees another gold brick. They marry, she has more excuses to not have sex than a schoolboy does not to have his homework. He is soon wearing his hat - and not on his head.



Off they go to Austria and things don't get much better on the sex side- at least not for him - the bellboy has a wide smile on him. He meets another brain specialist (David Warner) who tells him he can transfer the brain over to another being without surgery. Into apes. He has a condo with castle decor and a drawbridge and moat - and brains in jars. Lots of them. Martin falls in love with one who can communicate with him. He takes it home. Has long conversations. Takes it rowing. But damn, he has a wife who wants to kill him. This parodies noir and Universal horror to good effect. Constantly funny. Carl Reiner and Steve Martin are the meeting of two comedy legends of different generations.  The Spider Man sequence cracked me up. Ther is also a serial killer who turns out to be a famous celebrity. Maybe, I was just in the right mood for silliness.


STEVE! (Martin) A Documentary in 2 Pieces (2024) – 7.5

 



The one question that popped into my head initially was do we really need a three-hour documentary about Steve Martin and why now? And I don't have an answer other than to say it was quite enjoyable to watch. I hadn't realized what a stand-up comedian phenomenon he was back in the 1970s. Huge. The audience used to follow him outside after his performances and walk with him. I just missed it. The arrow through the head I knew and the catch-phrase "Excuse me" but I had never seen a performance. After seeing loads of clips in the first of the two-part film, I still don't really get it. But he was loved. America was ready for absurd fun comedy. It was the antidote to the Reagan years. Not political - just stupid fun. This is a documentary of sorts - broken into two-parts each running about 90-minutes - but it is also an autobiography because Martin leads the viewer through his life. It is his narration, it is his reminisces, his thoughts about his life back then. He details his comedy evolution over many years - it took him a long time and a lot of failures before he just suddenly took off. He describes how his act changed and what was happening in his life for that to happen.

 

So that is the first film. It takes us up to 1980 in basic chronological order - and that is when he stopped performing stand-up. He thought his style of comedy had run its course and he needed to move on. That takes us to the second part - which is not chronological and is an absolute delight. It is him now talking about his past, about his present, chatting a lot with Martin Short, about his painting collection, at times he gets emotional talking about things - his family, his daughter, his writing. It was sort of like sitting in his living room listening to him and his friends. I have been a fan of his films though he has had his share of stinkers - which he talks about - but he has had some beauties as well - Bowfinger, Roxanne, Pennies from Heaven, Dead Men Don't Wear Plaid, Planes, Trains and Automobiles, Dirty Rotten Scoundrels, L.A. Story, Grand Canyon and I very much have enjoyed his TV show Murders in the Building. Not too bad.