The King of Comedy

The King of Comedy is a 1982 American satirical black comedy drama film directed by Martin Scorsese and starring Robert De Niro (in his fifth collaboration with Scorsese), Jerry Lewis, and Sandra Bernhard. Written by Paul D. Zimmerman, the film focuses on themes such as celebrity worship and American media culture. 20th Century Fox released the film on February 18, 1983 in the United States, though the film was released two months earlier in Iceland.

Why It Rocks

 * 1) Amazing acting especially from Robert De Niro and Jerry Lewis. Robert De Niro especially is seen smiling throughout the film despite almost never smiling in most of his films.
 * 2) Great cinematography.
 * 3) "I'd rather be a king for a night, then a schmuck for lifetime."
 * 4) Rupert is a disturbing but sympathetic character whose past is only revealed at the end of the film.
 * 5) Funny moments for what there is like the Scooby-Doo-like chase between Rupert and security.
 * 6) It's a great deconstruction of how destructive groupie/Stan culture is and the negatives that comes with fame.
 * 7) Some pretty disturbing moments like when you see Rupert talking to cardboard cutouts pretending to be a Talk Show host or when it's revealed that Rupert's mother had been dead the whole time and that he was just hearing her in his head.
 * 8) Despite his actions, it was nice to see Rupert get his big moment on television and his stand up was funny albeit generic.
 * 9) The ending is left up to interpretation of whether it's just Rupert's imagination or reality.
 * 10) Great soundtrack with a lot of classical Jazz tracks from artist like B.B. King, Talking Heads, Ray Charles, and more.
 * 11) This film was an early pioneer of Cringe Comedy since most of the cringe comes from Rupert's series of humiliations.

Bad Qualities

 * 1) It's never told what happened to Masha and we never see her comeuppance despite her attempting to rape Jerry.
 * 2) As mentioned there are some cringy scenes, but this makes sense since scenarios seen with Rupert have most likely happened with real people.

Reception
Although the film was well received by critics, it bombed at the box office. De Niro said that the film "maybe wasn't so well received because it gave off an aura of something that people didn't want to look at or know". As of April 2020, 89% of critics have given the film a positive review on review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes based on 61 critic reviews, with an average rating of 8.35/10. The site's critics consensus states, "Largely misunderstood upon its release, The King of Comedy today looks eerily prescient, and features a fine performance by Robert De Niro as a strangely sympathetic psychopath." Metacritic gives it a weighted average score of 73 out of 100 based on 13 critic reviews, indicating "generally favorable reviews".

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