Review of Joan Rivers: A Piece of Work (2010) by Darren B — 15 Jul 2010

This is a film that is worth seeing for both its high and low points. Joan jokes on the Tonight show with Johnny Carson when he asks, "Don't men like intelligent women?" she responds that "No man has ever put his hand up a woman's dress looking for a library card.".

From that high point the film descends to an anxious audience when someone yells that he has a deaf son after Joan's joke that she hates children and that the perfect child for her would have been Hellen Keller. Rivers manages to retake control of the audience but it took all she could muster to direct them to what humor is all about.

If you have never seen Joan Rivers live, you may be shocked by her vulgarity and regular use of the F... word. You come away from this movie with a sense of the peculiar world of stand up comics which is best described by Joan's daughter who says she has met a lot of comics and they are all damaged people.