Word: comic
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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Shirley Jones has left her husband of 17 years, comic Marty Ingels, and he seems to be using it as a source for material: "Whenever we go out, she says, 'Think David Niven.' I say, 'O.K.' She says, 'So why's it coming out Pee-wee Herman?'" The problem of disparate comic tastes was apparently exacerbated by Jones' children Shaun, Ryan and Patrick Cassidy and stepson David Cassidy, who were unable to get happy with Ingels. The couple still plan to work together...
Lucky Jim confirmed Amis' ability to evoke such reactions in print. It also established the author's basic comic strategy: a beleaguered hero tries to behave inoffensively among people whose self-centered behavior drives him privately mad. This formula still sparkled in The Russian Girl (1994), in which a husband meditates on his wife's odd and affected accent: "After a time he had stopped noticing it at all more than a couple of times a day, and for years had given up speculating what speech-sounds she might make if, for example, he were to creep up behind...
...farce? The dream sequence of a sitcom? A fraternity skit? A metaphysical romp? Martin is one of the most versatile comic artists in America: screenwriter (The Jerk, Roxanne), actor, brilliant stand-up comedian, as well as author of several short plays (four of which will be on a bill next month at New York City's Public Theater). While so many comics ossify by relying on a few dependable crowd-pleasing gags and catchphrases, Martin keeps evolving...
...Allen re-writing his tabloid sins at an age (he'll be 60 this year) when he looks like a pensive Rumpelstiltskin; boyish roguery ill suits him. In TV revivals of Broadway farces, he plays crabby geezers: the tourist with tsuris in Don't Drink the Water, a decrepit comic in a new version of The Sunshine Boys. Yet in his films Allen is the Woody of old--or, rather, of young. To Lenny, the raw, vibrant Linda makes Amanda seem stale and shrewish. Bonham Carter (who's a radiant 29 and certainly doesn't look shrewish) must play that...
...incarnates with a weenie voice and a brassy poignancy. The distracting visual trope of Allen's last few movies--that virtually every scene, no matter how long, must be filmed in one shot with a very fidgety camera--pays off in the first meeting of Lenny and Linda; the comic tension is deliciously built and sustained. And when the chorus breaks into some dreamy Cole Porter harmonies as background to an unlikely amour, the goofiness is almost magical...