Word: shtick
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...locked ward during a psychotic episode. She signed her commitment papers with a single word: shame. It's one of the few paragraphs in Wishful Drinking that doesn't contain a punch line; only when she writes about her brushes with madness does Fisher drop her manic stand-up shtick and let us see, for a moment, what it's there to cover up. Ironically, it's when she's describing herself at her craziest that she sounds the most sane...
...than the star characters because they're not on screen as long? Alex, Marty, Gloria and Melman all have the heavy lifting of story lines; Julien and the penguins (and a couple of cranky monkeys who serve as the movie's Statler and Waldorf) have only to shake their shtick, deliver their bright lines and get off. (Also, they're smaller in stature, hence cuter.) Liberated from the burden of consciences or backstories or any recognizable feelings; they have no obligation to audiences other than to make 'em laugh. In this comedy, they're the comic relief...
However, once on the show, the aspirant leaders of men are submitted to a trying test—of their sense of humor. Mrs. Obama’s ability to keep up with Stewart’s (admittedly friendly) shtick with soft comic jabs of her own at her husband’s expense humanized both her and her husband. When former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich took on a challenge, joking his way through an early endorsement of Governor Sarah Palin in September, the effect was much the same...
Kudelka’s decision to cast women as the step-sisters, as opposed to the traditional strategy of employing men, was rooted in the hope that they would pull off the shtick and slap-stick humor with more high-brow jest than the gender-bending farce. Cornejo herself was more naturally entertaining at ABT than were Tempe Ostergren and Megan Gray here, but both are leggy beauties who mugged with aplomb...
...immediate superior, as a convincing villain. Likewise, the always-engaging Bridges, in a loose play on legendary Vanity Fair editor Graydon Carter, is entertaining—though in truth this may be due more to his mesmerizing gray wig than his actual performance. And when the buffoonery shtick is kept to manageable levels, even Pegg produces some amusement—particularly when trying to convince fellow partygoers that “Con Air” is the finest movie ever made. But these moments are only funny in a fleeting, peripheral way, and they lack the bite that a comedy...