"Looking for Comedy in the Muslim World"
Salon.Com
Albert Brooks brings people of all religions together for a great big group yawn.
By Stephanie Zacharek
Jan. 20, 2006 If you had any a choice in the matter, Albert Brooks, his not-quite-there eyebrows framing a high forehead filled with anxious thoughts, probably isn't the first guy you'd send to the other side of the world as an ambassador of comedy. He's not self-deprecating in the way, say, the young Woody Allen was, able to lure us into sympathetic complicity by revealing every nervous wrinkle in his self-esteem. Brooks isn't conspiratorial in that way: Instead of wooing us with his neuroses, he intentionally and considerately stands far back enough so we won't catch them. He's so deadpan he's often inscrutable, which is precisely where his genius lies. His nonchalant deconstruction of ventriloquism -- when the dummy on his arm, known as Danny, talks, Brooks' mouth moves unapologetically -- is a great surrealist gag. It's not that we can't believe what we're seeing; it's that we can't believe what he's getting away with. But will it play in Delhi?
By Stephanie Zacharek
Jan. 20, 2006 If you had any a choice in the matter, Albert Brooks, his not-quite-there eyebrows framing a high forehead filled with anxious thoughts, probably isn't the first guy you'd send to the other side of the world as an ambassador of comedy. He's not self-deprecating in the way, say, the young Woody Allen was, able to lure us into sympathetic complicity by revealing every nervous wrinkle in his self-esteem. Brooks isn't conspiratorial in that way: Instead of wooing us with his neuroses, he intentionally and considerately stands far back enough so we won't catch them. He's so deadpan he's often inscrutable, which is precisely where his genius lies. His nonchalant deconstruction of ventriloquism -- when the dummy on his arm, known as Danny, talks, Brooks' mouth moves unapologetically -- is a great surrealist gag. It's not that we can't believe what we're seeing; it's that we can't believe what he's getting away with. But will it play in Delhi?
posted by Unknown | 6:12 AM
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