Post by rra on Dec 22, 2007 1:12:18 GMT -5
MR. WARMTH: THE DON RICKLES PROJECT (2007) - ***1/2
You all have no idea how the very concept of Don Rickles' very best friend being Bob Newhart just blew my mind away. I mean, Newhart the calm, relaxed smart person going on vacations to China with the Great Asshole Insult Comic himself? God damn.
Then again, perceptions we garner about performers based from their stage schtick are either somewhat true or totally false. People thought for years that in their cinematic team-ups that Gene Wilder had a great relationship with Richard Pryor, when in fact the latter was a coked-up crippled asshole that Wilder had to contend with.
That's probably why director John Landis had in mind with shooting this documentary about this friend of his. This documentary begins with Landis' original meeting with Rickles on the set of KELLY'S HEROES, where Landis was a page man for 20th Century Fox. Hey, sometimes coffee boys do end up being good directors, and others become has-beens like Landis.
Either way, Landis detailsthe stand-up and TV/movie career of "Mr. Warmth," cutting between a 2006 Las Vegas gig with interviews by Rickles' friends, family, and fellow comic artists.
Seeing current stand-up headliners like Chris Rock and Sarah Silverman gush over the greatness of Don Rickles is just odd in that they operate from a different approach than Rickles.
Both work gigs from a exoductive, carefully-planned routine of jokes and one-liners. Rickles though, in the great tradition of Groucho Marx, is very much an inductive smartass. He probes the hapless audiences for their ethnicities or nationalities, and promptly character assassinates them on the spot.
To slam such racist and prejudicial comments at people who enjoy being the targets of Rickles, is hilarious. Yet it is also rejuvenating in that to see a legend in his 80s still working out an exhaustive schedule around the continent at casino and gambling shows. He doesn't need to work this much anymore really, but what is a jester that doesn't jest anymore?
Probably a Jerry Seinfeld. Urgh
Still though, the documentary's highlights must be the clips of Rickles on Johnny Carson's THE TONIGHT SHOW. He was a perfect foil of an adversary for Carson to bounce off this side of Ric Flair to Dusty Rhodes, Joker to Batman, you name it.
If Carson acted sincere as the calm MC, Rickles was was the party crasher who spiked the punch for the hell of it. Except the MC can raise some hell of his own if the intruder smashes his precious cigar box.
The documentary excels at these points, and detailing Rickles' encounters with a drunken Jackie Gleason and the Rat Pack. Apparently Rickles was the only guy in America who could mock Frank Sintra about his womanizing without getting his legs broken. Now that's impressive.
However, MR. WARMTH drags this side of an Ellen DeGeneres stand-up routine when Landis gets off-topic and goes on and on about great the old Mafia days of Vegas were. I know surely Landis was trying to set-up the conditions for Rickles' days in "Old Vegas," and its a good topic, but couldn't all this have been cut and be used for a whole other documentary about this rather huge subject?
That said, I think there is a prime moment in MR. WARMTH when Rickles is going over pictures of his old Hollywood associates from Sinatra to John Wayne, pointing out who is dead and who's barely hanging on for dear life.
Sounds solemn doesn't it? Yet the way Rickles goes through this morbid roll call, I grinned. He knows he doesn't have many years left probably, but he'll go out swinging on the stage, mocking more Asian people, to the very end.
Now the thought of this did make me feel very warm in the inside, and I'm laughing in the outside.
