John Landis's new documentary on Don Rickles, Mr. Warmth: The Don Rickles Project, works best when focused squarely on its star attraction. Every so often Landis gets distracted in telling (or rather showing other people like Bob Newhart) go on about the glory days of a mob-run Las Vegas, and it starts to loose a little of its focus. And every so often he takes a misstep with the editing. But since comedy is Landis's strong-suit as a director, anyway, it's fitting that his film works best when his subject is given the full-treatment, either in clips of his performances, his old Johnny Carson appearances, or with some of his adulators telling it like it is: he's one of the funniest stand-up comics of his time. And still today he kiss: watching him completely skewer every single race and both sexes in a Vegas audience is dynamite (sometimes you just wait for him to drop his microphone in ironic disgust).
Just hearing the man tell stories, or talk about his wonderful (and wonderfully Jewish) mother, or doing lovingly stupid imitations of his wife (the tongue is what clicks it), is entertaining. He's a man who takes his fame completely in stride, but not for granted. He tells of a cruel prank done on the set of Run Silent Run Deep involving him and Clark Gable; he goes overboard as host of the Tonight Show by breaking Carson's box or whatever, and Carson goes right next-door to the set of Rickles's show, where after he apologizes he says "ladies and gentlemen, Johnny Carson!" And then the testimonies themselves bring up laughs (Sarah Silverman comments how Rickles taught her what black people were like living secluded in New Hampshire), even if it's just repeating old Rickles lines. His is a very precise shtick where finding the line and only going across it so much is like an art- you don't want to make it into a totally sensationalist exercise, but the audience still has to have a good time at not only others' expenses, but their own. It's a kind of all-inclusive comedy, be it the schmuck who's 300 pounds and with a dopey wife, or the president, or, of course most brilliantly, Dean Martin.
It's not exactly a great documentary, but it's a fine showcase, and the kind of remembrance for one of those old kings of comedy that haven't yet kicked the bucket, like (unfortunately) so many in show-biz have in recent years. 7.5/10
Just hearing the man tell stories, or talk about his wonderful (and wonderfully Jewish) mother, or doing lovingly stupid imitations of his wife (the tongue is what clicks it), is entertaining. He's a man who takes his fame completely in stride, but not for granted. He tells of a cruel prank done on the set of Run Silent Run Deep involving him and Clark Gable; he goes overboard as host of the Tonight Show by breaking Carson's box or whatever, and Carson goes right next-door to the set of Rickles's show, where after he apologizes he says "ladies and gentlemen, Johnny Carson!" And then the testimonies themselves bring up laughs (Sarah Silverman comments how Rickles taught her what black people were like living secluded in New Hampshire), even if it's just repeating old Rickles lines. His is a very precise shtick where finding the line and only going across it so much is like an art- you don't want to make it into a totally sensationalist exercise, but the audience still has to have a good time at not only others' expenses, but their own. It's a kind of all-inclusive comedy, be it the schmuck who's 300 pounds and with a dopey wife, or the president, or, of course most brilliantly, Dean Martin.
It's not exactly a great documentary, but it's a fine showcase, and the kind of remembrance for one of those old kings of comedy that haven't yet kicked the bucket, like (unfortunately) so many in show-biz have in recent years. 7.5/10