Review of Shakes the Clown (1991) by Matt B — 16 Jun 2009

I am such a sucker...

Back in March I listened to Bobcat Goldthwait on 'The Adam Carolla Podcast'. I learned a lot about him. He was funny, thought provoking, and had a lot to say about the industry.

Prior to this interview, as most I'm sure, I knew Bobcat simply as the character actor from the Police Academy Series playing Zed and of course the Tonight Show fire debacle, but after hearing him speak about writing and directing films this picture in particular peaked my interest. So I added it to my Netflix queue and sort of forgot about it. When it arrived in the mail a couple of months later it wasn't one of those "What is this movie again???" situations, I remembered it very well and was sort of eager to pop it in...

I'll focus on the things that it WAS because it will be a shorter list. It had a pretty funny premise and I'm pretty sure I understand what he was trying to "say" with the movie. I enjoyed elements about it and it had a lot of funny lines.

"You didn't see nothing old man. We're just five happy party clowns, sitting down to a plate of beef. White.. powdery.. beef..".

In the end this film is pretty bad, so bad in fact that Robin Williams was credited by an alias, "Marty Fromage". Which apparently is a pseudo name from a comedy team that he and Goldthwait had in the past, but part of me feels that he didn't want this on his resume as this is one of the next films he did after "The Fisher King".

With that being said, people seem to LOVE this movie. I read review after glowing review on this and other sites complimenting the movie on it's dark comedy and brilliant storytelling, including Martin Scorsese who simply said, "I liked Shakes the Clown.".

I may have had higher expectations going into it than I should have after hearing Bobcat talk about it 17 years after making it, but I am a sucker for not listening to my instincts which said, "You would have heard about this film earlier if it was worth a watch.".

The one thing that I learned from watching this move is that Scorsese and I DO NOT have the same taste in cinema.

..mcfly..