Lawbolisted Powerful

RipDelight This is a tender, generous movie that likes its characters and presents them as real people, full of flaws and strengths.

Chirphymium It's entirely possible that sending the audience out feeling lousy was intentional

FirstWitch A movie that not only functions as a solid scarefest but a razor-sharp satire.

bowmanblue After Robert DeNiro had teamed up with Martin Scorsese on films like 'Mean Streets' and 'Taxi Driver' it was hard to see anything the pair of them worked on failing. Then came 'King of Comedy.' I think that it's unfair to call it a 'fail,' but it certainly didn't set the Box Office alight in the same way their previous collaborations did. At least it has slowly picked up more of a cult audience over the years, but, perhaps most pertinently, it seems more 'of its time' today than in the early eighties when it was actually released. This time round DeNiro plays Rupert Pupkin - the deliberately oddly-named man who lives (basically) in his mother's basement, where he rehearses for the day he becomes a rich and famous stand-up comedian. So sure that he'll make it big time that he constantly stalks a genuine celebrity, Jerry Langford (played effortlessly by Jerry Lewis who basically plays himself throughout), acting like the two of them are old friends. Along the way Pupkin is 'aided' by another of Jerry's stalkers, this time a woman (played by Sandra Bernhard). The two of them, despite not getting on as they're both competing for a place in Jerry's life, team up in order to both get what they want out of their 'friend/lover.'Perhaps one reason it didn't resonate with audiences at the time was that, for a film with the word 'comedy' in the title, it's not - technically - that funny. It's not supposed to be a laugh-a-minute chuckle-fest. If it is any sort of comedy then it's definitely 'black comedy.' You'll feel a sense of sadness for our 'hero' as he's more pathetic than heroic. He can't see what we - the audience - can. Today we live in a world where you can become 'famous' from the comforts of your own home (or mother's basement in Pupkin's case) simply by becoming a 'Youtube star.' Back in the early eighties I'm guessing that not everyone wanted to be famous. Okay, so most people have the odd daydream about being a film star/rock star/astronaut/whatever, but it didn't seem to be until the millennium (perhaps when reality TV took off in a big way?) when everyone decided that fame was within their grasp (and without much talent or effort needed to achieve it!).'King of Comedy' shows how just because you WANT to become famous and think that it's your 'right' because of your 'talent,' you actually need a little more than sheet desire and self-belief. Yes, luck will always play a part in anyone's rise to the top, but what we have here is more of a sad tale of a man who's dream outweighs his talent. If you know what you're getting then you'll definitely find an excellent little piece that is more relevant today than it ever was. Robert DeNiro is still regarded as one of the greatest actors of our generation and it's films like this that will always play a big part in his rich history - even if they weren't quite appreciated at the time.

albert9999 I didn't like the movie. It is built on 2 parts. The first part is a wanna-be comedian (De Niro) stalking a successful Comedian (Jerry Lewis). The second part obviously is about the Stalker kidnapping the Comedian. I couldn't watch the second part, because I was so annoyed that I had to stop.What makes this movie so cumbersome is that the main character (De Niro) is an annoying stalker which is shown endlessly. Even after the point is made, that he is a stalker, the showing of him stalking goes on and on and on and never stops. The movie has a main character which is near to unendurable. Yes, its great acting, but its in my opinion a thing that destroys the movie, to follow a main character which is annoying and boring.The photography is nice and the remaster looks great, the movie catches the 80s look and feel of New York well.It may be worth seeing out of academic interest, but seems entertaining only to masochists.

maurice yacowar The film opens and closes on shots of ambiguous reality, the no-man's-land between real life and its representation on TV. The first shot is the grainy image — as off a TV screen — of Jerry Langford (Jerry Lewis) starting his act. But we don't see the TV set, just the TV graininess full-screen. Do this film's first image — which is usually of life — here is of a TV image. From here on, the media image trumps any reality. The film explores that gap.In the last shot Rupert Pupkin (Robert de Niro) stands at a mike milking the audience's applause (as Langford did earlier). He stands in the darkness with no clear context. He may or may not be on a stage or before a camera. He's pinpointed by lights, in his garish showbiz suit. He's not doing anything but basking in the lights and wallowing in the applause. Pipkin has completed his prison sentence for abducting Langford and he has been paid a million dollars advance for his best-selling confessional book. Now he is celebrated for being a celebrity not for anything he is doing. The act has supplanted the person. The shot seems so unreal it suggests it may be Pupkin's fantasy, an image of the ambition or desire his career has left unfulfilled despite his apparent success. The casting advances that meta-cinema mode. It plays in the grey area between reality and its mediation. Among the minor characters, Johnny Carson's producer Fred De Cordova plays Langford's producer Bert Thomas. The Ed MacMahon role is provided by McMahon's predecessor on the Jack Paar Tonight show, Ed Herlihy, effectively playing the oleaginous McMahon. (Johnny Carson himself was offered the Langford role but declined it.) Familiar guests Dr Joyce Brothers and Tony Randall play themselves. Media figures Bill Jorgensen, Marvin Scott, Chuck Stevens, William Littauer and Jeff David speak as themselves. Producer Edgar Scherick plays the network president. Director Scorsese plays the show's director, with his mother Catherine heard as Pupkin's "Ma-aaa." His father is at the bar watching Pupkin's TV appearance. DeNiro's wife Diahnne Abbott plays Rupert's romance. Other castings play against their familiar image. Comedian Sarah Bernhardt plays the needy, wealthy Masha with an abrasive ardor for star Langford. Her brashness and anger are an extension from her comic persona. Comic pianist Victor Borge appears as pianist in Pupkin's fantasy of his TV marriage — but neither cracks nor plays a joke. Similarly, Lewis is almost exclusively known as a manic comic but he plays this role absolutely straight, without a scintilla of a lapse into the persona that has defined him. De Niro's Pupkin is a dramatic variation on his usual Scorsese role: the constrained savagery of an alienated brute on the make. As Pupkin pulls a comic routine out of his family life frustrations, Scorsese makes this DeNiro character an adept aper of TV's false warmth. In his fantasy patting of "Jarelleh's" cheeks the De Niro and Lewis personae touch and spark. As Pupkin dreams of surpassing Langford, he — like the film itself— appropriates the royal title to which Jerry Lewis has the plausible claim. These castings convey the film's central confusion between role and reality, privileging the former. Artifice is all. Hence the abyss between the friendliness and warmth that Langford projects on air and his bleak solitude at home. There he eats alone. He walks around with a single golf club. He may well golf alone. In his mother's basement Pupkin practices a social glibness that he learned off TV — and criminally contrives to air it. Of course one of the main forms of this false human connection is love. "I'm going to love you like nobody's loved you" opens the film's theme song. Sick loves, twisted loves, abound in this arena of social fakery. In his fantasy Rupert expresses his love for Langford and Liza Minnelli, as if his emotion can bring their cardboard cutouts to life. Masha's passion for Langford has nothing to do with what either is or feels, just her random though total commitment. The theme is concentrated in the street scene where a woman tells Jerry she loves him. When he declines to speak on the phone to her cousin she yells at him, hoping he gets cancer. She too loves him like nobody loves him. But it's not a matter of come rain or come shine. It's a matter of reality supplanted by artifice. In this light the film foreshadows the inflection of American politics into reality TV show.

Leofwine_draca Robert De Niro's performance as an obsessed fan (a role he would later return to, albeit in a darker, more murderous fashion, in THE FAN) shines through in this unusual Martin Scorsese comedy-cum-drama which shares elements with TAXI DRIVER. THE KING OF COMEDY is undoubtedly a brilliant film which was misunderstood and shunned by most audiences on first release (later even by Scorsese himself), which resulted in it being a flop. This is a shame for a number of reasons.First of all, the acting is top-notch. Method man De Niro shines as the lowly Rupert Pupkin, creating a truly memorable character when he converses in his bedroom with cardboard cut-outs and imagines himself as a television great. On top of this there's a fine "straight man" role from Jerry Lewis, the object of Pupkin's growing obsession, and the two get to share some fine moments - particularly when Pupkin breaks into Lewis' country mansion later in the film. Female support comes from an understated Diahnne Abbott as Pupkin's love interest, and Sandra Bernhard as a fellow mentally unstable fan whose role is alternatively funny and rather tragic. A seasoned troupe of veteran performers largely play themselves and add to the movie's realism.Scenes in which Pupkin tries to infiltrate Langford's offices and finds himself repeatedly shunned are a delight to watch, and both dramatic and pretty funny with it. The twist ending, in which Pupkin achieves his fame IN SPITE of everything that has happened, will leave you scratching your head and wondering if this is another dream-fantasy from Pupkin's mind or whether it really did happen. In any case, the pairing of two talented men - Scorsese as director and De Niro as star - once again makes for unmissable entertainment, a film which you can't take your eyes off the screen when watching. A totally unique cross between black comedy and psychological drama, this both scary and funny, a feat often difficult to achieve, and I don't know of any other movie quite like it out there.