So I just watched a pretty forgettable movie, The Heart Specialist. The main character is a doctor who happens to do comedy as part of his research on laughter and medicine. The club owner character is an actual comedian in real life. None of the stand-up was funny. There was a chuckle here and there but nothing you would go see.
The only time I remember seeing a funny stand-up scene was Dave Chappelle in The Nutty Professor. Every other time comes off as lame jokes followed by canned laughter.
Tom Hanks in Punchline. Dustin Hoffman in Lenny. Reading a script and delivering a standup performance are very different animals–by “movie” I assume you’re excluding Eddie Murphy’s concert films, and Richard Pryor’s as well.
Are you talking about part of the script is a spot where the films characters perform as stand-up comedians?
Or can scenes that masquerade as a situation but are actually standup routines count. If so, I nominate every Abbott and Costello film, every Martin and Lewis film, and every Bob Hope film (with or without Bing).
Yeah, if you don’t exclude those, those are my prime examples as well. Murphy’s “Raw” wasn’t his best work overall, but it has his best story ever (what Richard told him to tell Cosby).
Richard’s concert films are comedy master classes.
The Judd Apatow movie *Funny People *had good routines by charactes played by Adam Sandler, Seth Rogan, and Aziz Ansari, among others. Ansari’s character “Randy,” although meant to be a straightforward comic in the movie, is a send up of comics that (some) audiences love but comics hate (think Kenny Bania, or, for a real life example, Dane Cooke or Carlos Mencia). Randy later figured into Anzari’s actual routine
It isn’t true standup but I love the old Jewish guy (Eddie Murphy) in Coming to America who tells jokes in the barber shop. His “Waiter, there’s something wrong with my soup” joke is a classic.
Richard Belzer played, well, Richard Belzer, as the Club MC that Ralph Garci did his routine in.
And Ralph, played by Barry Miller, performed the same routine in the move twice. The first time he killed, and it was pretty well delivered as a straight up act; the second time he bombed, which was fantasically acted.
I always liked the lounge comedian from Defending Your Life giving a performace to recently deceased folks:
Comedian: How’d ya die?
Arthur: I was in a coma.
Comedian: I’m sorry. How long were you in the coma?
Arthur: I really don’t know.
Comedian: Let’s play a game, Art. Elvis: living or dead?
Arthur: Living.
Comedian: Long coma, Art. Long coma.
Sorry for the long delay in reply but yeah I’m talking about characters who do stand-up so no Murphy or Pryor. The stand up comedian seems to be a staple of the DTV African-American comedy or drama. If the character is played by an actor. the stand-up is usually terrible. If played by a comedian it’s less so.
I listened to an interview with Aubrey Plaza (April from Parks and Rec) where she explained that Apatow pretty much forced all the actors to go out and do real stand up in front of a live audience before the movie was filmed. Some of them, like Aubrey, had never even done stand-up before.