Certifiably Jonathan (2007)
A famous comedian and artist wants to display his work at an art museum. Just when he thinks he's lost his touch, a series of famous comedians drop by to help him rekindle his artistic and comedic spark.
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So much average
Good films always raise compelling questions, whether the format is fiction or documentary fact.
The film never slows down or bores, plunging from one harrowing sequence to the next.
It is an exhilarating, distressing, funny and profound film, with one of the more memorable film scores in years,
A famous comedian and artist wants to display his work at an art museum. Just when he thinks he has lost his touch, a series of famous comedians drop by to help him rekindle his artistic and comedic spark.Following his recent death, watching this film is my way of getting to know Jonathan. I think it worked! Robin Williams does his hackneyed, humorless bit (and Winters makes a nice remark about how Williams has overshadowed him), and Jim Carrey even shows up. In fat, Carrey's few moments on screen are quite funny to me -- which is odd, given that I am not a huge Carrey fan. He has a quick wit, and I wish we saw more of that and less of his physical comedy in films.
This film is a piece of performance art that intentionally confuses the line between fiction and reality, much as Andy Kaufman was once famous for. On the surface, this is a documentary about the desire of comedian Jonathan Winters to have his work as a painter taken seriously. Winters once spent some time in a mental hospital, so when his sanity begins to break under pressure to produce new work for a promised MoMA exhibit, viewers are left to wonder how much of his breakdown is real, and how much is a put on, as his behavior straddles a line between the frightening and ridiculous. Sadly, I fear that knowing it is all a put on prior to seeing the movie spoils much of the experience, since the film is not nearly as clever as a mere "mockumentary", as it is as an "Is He? or Isn't He?" piece of performance art.