Review of The King of Comedy (1982) by Sabrina I — 04 Jul 2011

A brilliant satire on the celebrity culture. Sharply written and executed - THE KING OF COMEDY is one of Scorsese's best if little seen films. Deniro is pitch perfect as Rupert Pumpkin. I swear; just typing the name made me giggle a bit! Rupert is such a loser - the things he does are so out there, that you are embarrassed for him. He doesn't realize how he is humilating himself or does he? Maybe that was part of his plan! Some people say he was dreaming the ending of the film. Perhaps. Either way it works so well. Rupert was more of a dreamer than a doer anyway.

I love how the film perfectly fits in with our times. We are living in a time with 24/7 media and reality shows - arguably our obsession with celebrities has gotten worse. We are living in a time where anyone can just make a video; post it on youtube and become famous. Or someone just has to do anything outrageous and the 'news' channels will pick it up. Pretty much anyone can have their 15 minutes of fame nowadays. That might be why the desire to become famous is even greater than when this film came out. Like the character's in this film I'm sure theres lots of people out there who plan their lives around their favorite celebrities. In the age of the 'twitter wars' - this creepy, amusing little gem makes so much sense.