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That is to say, Seinfeld -- who killed off all his old "gold" material in a tour and special entitled I'm Telling You For The Last Time -- is seen here starting from scratch. He has no material, no apparent memory of how to sell a joke to a comedy club crowd, and no idea why he feels compelled to do so.
This is painfully brought home at the beginning of the film, where Seinfeld is introduced -- his first workable five minutes in hand -- at New York's Comedy Cellar. The audience is insane with delight, but soon subdued as Jerry becomes a deer in the headlights. The heckling is funnier than him.
From this ugly beginning a full concert set blooms -- the one he brought to Toronto last spring as part of his first tour of new material. Not a funny movie, but an amazingly honest one, Comedian follows Jerry through "I've got a good 10 minutes ..." status, then 20 ... then a half hour ... then an hour. Along the way he is given advice -- some of it bad -- in smoky clubs from very good comics. Jay Leno, for example, keeps trying to get him to resurrect his old act -- this from a man who still does O.J. and Lorena Bobbitt jokes on tour.
At first, inexplicably, and later tellingly, the movie also follows the saga of Orny Adams, a good young comedian who is, nonetheless, not the comedy legend he thinks he is and an empty soul in general. He accepts advice ungraciously, dissing comedy legends like Steven Wright, and generally acts like an ass. His half of the movie follows him to Montreal's Just For Laughs fest, where he fails to "kill," and complains incessantly.
Indeed, it's clear that Adams -- who has to have hurt his career with this film -- is positioned as the young anti-Jerry. He rejects advice. Jerry seeks it. Adams brims with arrogance and inflated ego. Jerry questions himself constantly. Adams dies on Letterman. Jerry kills. Adams is contemptuous of his "elders." Jerry's respect extends to peers and idols like Robert Klein and Bill Cosby, the latter of whom he meets briefly like a starstruck kid in what amounts to the film's climax. Adams wants a break to get out of the comedy club scene. Jerry wants back in.
An impediment to his attempt to be "one of the guys" again is his wife Jessica, who is in about every other scene, baby in arms. For all this, she says about six words total, but does a lot of laughing at jokes she's heard 1,000 times. Just a clue of what being married to Jerry Seinfeld must entail.
What Comedian captures best is the neurotic camaraderie of people who live for that crack cocaine-like five-minute high you get from making people laugh. Seinfeld's chief confidante is Colin Quinn, a "comic's comic" who never shone on Saturday Night Live. Also along for beer, kibbitzing and chicken wings are the likes of Chris Rock, Garry Shandling, Kevin Nealon and George Wallace.
A backstage must-see for true fans of comedy.
(This film is rated AA)