The Comedian

An aging, semiwashed-up insult comic (Robert De Niro) roughs up a heckler in a club and winds up doing community service, where he meets and bonds with a woman (Leslie Mann) with similar anger issues, having similarly roughed up an ex. Director Taylor Hackford deserves credit for casting De Niro and Danny DeVito as brothers, for reuniting De Niro with Harvey Keitel (as Mann’s father) and for fostering an easy, cheerful chemistry between De Niro and Mann. But De Niro’s character isn’t as witty or funny as everybody around him says he is, and the movie feels only half-cooked. The four writers (Art Linson, Jeff Ross, Richard LaGravanese and Lewis Friedman) seem to have spent more time rewriting each other than working together—in every sense, not on the same page—and the movie overstays its welcome. J.L.