[.ca] Mr. Saturday Night (Widescreen)

From Amazon.com:
Billy Crystal co-wrote, directed, and starred in this ambitious 1992 comedy-drama about an aged comedian named Buddy Young Jr., whose foul attitude and poor judgment have a strongly negative effect on his career and the people who care for him most. A survivor of the Borscht Belt tradition of stand-up comedians, Buddy's quick with a one-liner but clueless about how to treat people--he's like a cross between George Burns, Milton Berle, and a rabid pit bull. Helen Hunt plays Buddy's tolerant new agent who's been hired to revive his lagging career, but the movie's saving grace is David Paymer's Oscar-nominated performance as Buddy's much-maligned brother, who's helpless to stop Buddy's downward spiral. Having invented the Buddy Young character for his own comedy routines, Crystal knows this comic curmudgeon inside and out, and his show-biz savvy adds much-needed authenticity under layers of phony-looking old-age makeup. The movie works best when it's offering insight into Buddy's lifetime of disappointment, and some of the dialogue is memorably sharp. Crystal can't resist a seemingly forced happy ending, however, and the closing scenes resort to sentimentality that clashes with the rest of the movie. --Jeff Shannon

don't anal-yze the realism, just enjoy!!:
funny, warm, realistic, borscht belt humor at its best. Paymer received an academy-award nomination for best supporting and rightfully so. I loved this movie! A real "feel-good" flick. The type of harmless humor that is a dying breed. A funny movie and a fun movie at the same time!

Tremendously Moving Performance:
Poignant and moving--a transformational performance by Billy Crystal who gives such a finely nuanced performance of such depth that the movie has stayed with me for years. This isn't about a comdeian per se, its about somebody who realises that they have just missed the boat, felt that they were naturally entitled to be on the boat, and have to deal with that sense of life's betrayal. Crystal stops being just a funny man, and shows himself to be deeply sensitive and actually -- very deep. Disappointed viewers were looking for comic fluff, and when they got a sophisticated performance of a difficult man, they expressed their shock by rating the film badly.

Too mean to be funny, and too funny to be meaningful:
What a gyp - "Mr. Saturday Night" is supposed to be at least either heartwarming or funny, but is neither. Billy Crystal is Buddy Young, one of the sort of old time Jewish comics who got his start in the postwar "borscht belt". When the flick opens up, Buddy old yet still going strong - perhaps a bit too strong. Still playing gigs, it's clear that Buddy has missed out on big success despite a lifetime of hard work. Record deals and primetime haven't elevated Young to the pantheon of American entertainment like Sid Ceaser or Jerry Lewis. Instead, he plays rest homes and (when he's lucky) cruise ships. Though married, Buddy's true companion is his long suffering brother, Stan (David Paymer). In flashbacks, we learn that Buddy and Stan were originally supposed to have been a team, but Stan backed out at the last minute - leaving Buddy to accept the spotlight. The attention, which gave Buddy fame at first, only produced resentment later on. At first a primetime draw, Buddy's show eventually sank in the ratings (Davy Crockett killed him). A shot at comeback on the Sullivan show turned disastrous - he shared the bill with the Beatles. Various attempts to cash in on the latest craze each ended in failure (when was the last time you dusted off your LP of "Disco Jew"?). Though Buddy seems resolute to go on, each failure erodes a veneer within him, exposing Buddy's nastier side, one that drives away all but his closest relatives, and makes life hell even for them. Though covering years of Buddy's life in flashback, the plot centers around what may be a new break - when a new agent (Helen Hunt) manages to snag for Buddy a promising role in a movie to be directed by a young Buddy fan (played by Ron Silver). Ofcourse nothing works out - but that's not the movie's problem. Instead, the flick pulls strings shamelessly, using the same tricks that made "A League of their Own" look contrived and very Hollywood. Whether the swelling music or the tears, nothing looks real in this movie. What really kills this flick? The script plays either very funny or very sad, but forgets (or simply never understood) that real Jewish humor is both at the same time - only wearing different faces, but essentially both heartbreaking and hysterically funny at the same time. Instead, the flick never manages to reconcile how such a nasty guy can be both funny and mean and just makes him too separate characters - unfortunately, the mean and less entertaining one gets most of the screen time. If the flick had played it lighter on both counts, it may not have been as funny, but it would have been more poignant and believable.

Poor, poor film:
Simply awful filmization about a comedian coming to terms with his own life. Embarrassing in all ways, with Crystal and rest of the cast wasted horrendously. To add to the "turkey" list, grade-Z makeup. Judge for yourself what is worse about this bomb: the dialouge, acting, or makeup.

I'll take Calvero:
The washed-up entertainer at the ...end of his life and career takes stock, learning what really matters. I've seen this movie before, when it was called LIMELIGHT. Chaplin handles the same thematic material in a much classier way.