‘Albert Brooks: Defending My Life’ Overview: Rob Reiner’s Pleasant HBO Doc Tribute Leaves You Wanting Extra

It’s unusually applicable that Rob Reiner‘s new documentary, Albert Brooks: Defending My Life, is getting its movie competition rollout at a second when most of Brooks’ physique of labor as a writer-director is unavailable on any main streaming platform.

Perhaps classics like Actual Life, Misplaced in America and Defending Your Life can have streaming properties by the point HBO airs the documentary in November. However you understand what’s going to all the time be accessible? Discovering Nemo. Brooks is justifiably revered in sure circles, however the decline of a well-liked monoculture for the reason that Seventies, when his Saturday Evening Stay shorts and Johnny Carson appearances made his model of irony-fueled wit pleasantly mainstream, implies that for a bigger viewers, he’s a speaking fish.

Albert Brooks: Defending My Life places Brooks in correct context each for many who already adore him and for audiences certain to need extra info on a legend who, over the course of 88 minutes, is canonized by the likes of Jon Stewart, Chris Rock, Sarah Silverman, Conan O’Brien, Larry David, Tiffany Haddish, Alana Haim, Brian Williams, Steven Spielberg, David Letterman, Anthony Jeselnik and extra.

For these within the latter class, the restricted availability of Brooks’ oeuvre is likely to be a minor post-doc concern. And for these within the former class? Provided that Garry Shandling and George Carlin each obtained four-hour HBO documentary remedy lately, it’s laborious to not really feel like Brooks bought a tiny bit short-changed with merely a feature-length doc, one on which my main grievance was, “Give me extra.” However an Albert Brooks documentary with an inferiority advanced? Applicable!

Although A-listers and their adulation play an necessary half in Defending My Life, the documentary’s backbone is an prolonged dialog between Reiner and Brooks held on the West Los Angeles Italian favourite Matteo’s. The 2 multi-hyphenates, each youngsters of iconic funnymen, had been classmates at Beverly Hills Excessive College and so they’ve been shut associates and occasional collaborators ever since.

There’s a pure and affectionate rapport between the 2 males and, particularly when discussing shared biographical particulars, Defending My Life captures an entirely fascinating sensation of discovering your self plunked down in the course of inside jokes and good-natured ribbing which have been ongoing for 60 years. All the time an distinctive straight-man, Reiner ably units Brooks up for lots of autobiographical anecdotes that he’s clearly advised earlier than and retells with wry aplomb, whether or not discussing the challenges of rising up with the identify “Albert Einstein,” or providing a energetic and bittersweet recounting of his father’s loss of life on a Friar’s Membership stage.

On the skilled facet of issues, Reiner is at his greatest main his topic via the early levels of his profession, interspersing Brooks’ reminiscences and self-analysis with quite a lot of footage, together with clips from speak reveals on which the younger standup honed his prodigious craft. I knew a few of these routines — Brooks as a clumsy ventriloquist kills me each time — however there’s little doubt that over 50 years, Brooks the Auteur and Brooks the Versatile Character Actor have usurped Brooks the Alt-Comedy Trailblazer.

The documentary is sort of midway via earlier than Brooks discusses his relationship with the genesis of Saturday Evening Stay, in addition to his profession redefining work on Actual Life. That is the place Reiner’s effectivity as interviewer lapses somewhat. Particularly relating to his writing-directing credit, every part is no less than addressed, however often in a way extra like working your approach down a Wikipedia guidelines than something near depth. All of Brooks’ key movies get no less than a token anecdote, typically tied to their origins, presumably centered on only one scene — not even essentially integral, like Sharon Stone speaking about her nude scene in The Muse — and, within the case of In search of Comedy within the Muslim World, often tied to the struggles round their launch.

The entire associates and acolytes singing Brooks’ praises are nice, however it’s attainable that Defending My Life would have been extra satisfying had it simply been Brooks, Reiner and a few improbable clips. As it’s, the doc would possibly go away you craving for added depth.

As soon as a gushing James L. Brooks reveals up, I may have watched a full hour simply on Broadcast Information. It’s disappointing to not have reliably partaking figures like Martin Scorsese and Steven Soderbergh on digicam to speak about Taxi Driver and Out of Sight. It isn’t stunning that Lorne Michaels is absent, however the tales he may have advised, I might have wished to listen to. There’s a lot speak in regards to the casting of Meryl Streep in Defending Your Life, however she’s lacking. And that’s earlier than you get to how unhappy it’s that folks like Charles Grodin, Rip Torn and Debbie Reynolds are not with us to share their tales. It most likely isn’t that Reiner made the “incorrect” film right here or targeting the “incorrect” issues, however I couldn’t shake the sense that the chance for this form of retrospective with this sort of entry might by no means come once more and extra benefit may have been taken.

Defending My Life spends its closing chapter on the “life” a part of the title and of its focal hero, with an unusually heat have a look at Brooks’ marriage and his relationship together with his two youngsters. That pointedly takes the place that might have been given to letting Brooks mirror on the state of contemporary comedy and this second late in his profession, when he hasn’t written or directed a film in 18 years. Does he nonetheless have tales he needs to inform? Or is he merely comfortable and cozy, and is {that a} unusual frame of mind for him?

There I am going once more, craving extra: Extra new Albert Brooks movies and extra entry to the previous movies, greater than 88 minutes to chronicle one of many all-time greats. Not in a nasty approach, although. There’s no have to defend wanting extra Albert Brooks.