A-List: Comedians Who Can Be Dramatic
By Josh Spiegel
July 30, 2009
BoxOfficeProphets.com
Of course, in recent years, one writer-producer-director has tried to bridge the gap between comics in funny roles and comics in serious roles: Judd Apatow. When it comes to movies that he produces, the results are a bit mixed: for every Superbad, a movie that earns its bittersweet moments between best friends Seth and Evan, there is a Drillbit Taylor, a movie that earns its spot in the bargain bin. Still, Apatow's two times behind the camera, The 40-Year Old Virgin and Knocked Up, are not only ridiculously raunchy, but also sweet, sometimes sad, and, most importantly, real (I am, for this article, ignoring the Bollywood finale of The 40-Year Old Virgin). This week heralds Apatow's third time as director with Funny People, starring Adam Sandler, Seth Rogen, Leslie Mann, Jonah Hill, and a slew of comic actors and celebrities; it looks to be his most dramatic work yet.
Whether the movie will do well at the box office or in our minds is yet to be determined. At the very least, I have high hopes based on the pedigree, and the idea that Adam Sandler will once again attempt to act seriously instead of do funny voices and have broad stereotypes surrounding him. I won't get into too much about this erstwhile goofball, as he's about to make it onto this week's A-List, which will look at the best performers who bring the funny and sad in movies.
The list has work mostly from people who are still alive, well, and working; unfortunately, the list is dominated by men, as the amount of comic actresses who break out of the mold to do serious work isn't so easy to rifle through. Sure, there are actresses who can incite laughter and tears, but none have ever stepped out so far from their comfort zones as the men on this list. Let's take a look at the top folks at making us cry and laugh.
Charlie Chaplin
In some ways, Charlie Chaplin paved the way for movies that attempted to have high drama and low humor. Though one of his most well-known roles that has stark differences between hilarity and sadness is 1940's The Great Dictator, where he plays a barely disguised slam at Adolf Hitler and a man who looks exactly like the titular tyrant, Chaplin often was able to make people giggle one minute, and look for some tissues the next minute. The great example is City Lights, the movie where we marvel at the goofiness of the Tramp trying to win a boxing match without even throwing a punch and find ourselves sniffling at the film's closing moments, which are far more moving than entire tearjerkers that come out these days.
Chaplin never made a bid to be in such a starkly dramatic role that he surprised people, certainly, but when you factor in the idea that he's thought of as the Tramp, and only the funny aspects of said character, it's worth keeping Chaplin on the top of this list; frankly, if it wasn't for this silent star trying so hard to bring as many emotions to the surface of the films he made, we may not have people like Judd Apatow making movies that are now classified as dramedies. Certainly, Chaplin's films are far funnier than they are sad, but there are sharp emotional turns throughout most of his movies, not all played for laughs. This iconic star is best known for making us laugh, but he won our hearts through more than that.
Robin Williams
I know, there are many of you out there who'd like to contest the idea that Robin Williams was ever funny. Still, his early stand-up comedy along with star-making roles in such films as Good Morning, Vietnam made Williams not only one of the brashest comic stars of the 1980s, but one of the most high-profile actors to choose to work in a different genre. His first stab at dramatic work was Dead Poets Society, a movie where he managed to be wild and crazy some of the time, but also be one of the more inspiring teachers to ever grace a private school's halls. Williams won his only Academy Award for his supporting role in Good Will Hunting, but for my money, his two best dramatic roles came in a one-two punch in 2002: Insomnia and One Hour Photo.
The former pitted him, as a sly and cunning serial killer, against Al Pacino, as a world-weary cop doing a favor for a friend by investigating a murder in Alaska. The latter is a stark contrast from even that crime drama: Williams is Sy Parrish, a lonely photo-shop clerk who stalks a young family in the town where he lives. Both roles require completely different skills, and there's no point in either story where Williams strikes a false note. Frankly, the fact that Williams doesn't blanch completely from the fierce Pacino is worth congratulating all by itself. He appears to be falling back into bad habits with his latest, Old Dogs, a silly comedy where he stars alongside John Travolta in what may end up being a remake of Father's Day, a movie best left forgotten, but Williams still remains one of the stronger comic actors with a dark streak.
Adam Sandler
Adam Sandler is still young, younger than most of the actors on this list who made great strides in dramatic films, turning expectations around. Yet, for one film alone, I am willing to place him on this list: the unique, odd, bewitching and utterly enthralling Punch-Drunk Love, a movie that becomes more and more painful to watch with every repeat viewing. When I first saw this film, there was a lot of laughter, and though it was relatively infectious, I was fairly certain that the audience surrounding me was missing a lot of what was really going on.
Punch-Drunk Love is the story of Barry, a man who sells novelty plungers out of a large storage unit, is tormented by his seven sisters, and has some form of mental illness, which leads him into fits of rage. Unbelievably, he meets a beautiful woman (Emily Watson) who is very attracted to him. The whole experience is quite odd, a subversion of the characters Sandler is best known for, along with a mishmash of color, songs from 1980's Popeye and one of the most compelling showdowns between two men prone to anger; only an auteur like Paul Thomas Anderson could make this movie, and surprisingly, only Sandler could play this role. He digs deep here, as I hope he does in Funny People, so much so that his performance is perfectly uncomfortable. I only hope he starts backing away from movies like I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry.
Jim Carrey
There are strides, and there are strides. It's hard to go from being a guy popping out of a rhino's butt to playing someone whose world is so perfect that it's completely made-up. Yet, Jim Carrey did it, and did it quite well. Though Robin Williams has had the most diverse career among the five men listed here, veering from silliness to scariness, Carrey seems to be more notable in his choices. In some ways, the outrageousness that marked this funnyman's humor in the mid-1990s made it more surprising when he worked very hard to make sure he was believable as Truman Burbank, or as Andy Kaufman in Man on the Moon. If anything, Carrey's rubbery face and wild energy may be best served in his next project, Robert Zemeckis' adapation of A Christmas Carol, where he will play, through the magic of motion-capture technology, eight characters, including Ebenezer Scrooge.
Carrey's style hasn't always worked (what, you didn't already forget The Majestic, did you?), but he is very diverse, managing to bring some well-needed pathos to each of his roles, even those that are in particularly terrible films (let's just all agree to forget that The Grinch ever happened). Still, for every misstep, he's been part of something truly brilliant, whether it's The Truman Show or one of the best films of the last ten years, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, where he plays someone so depressed that he's probably not smiled in a few years. As long as Carrey keeps making movies like that, it's hard to mock him too hard.
Bill Murray
It took Wes Anderson, a director whose style and movies are mocked mercilessly (unfairly, I'd argue), to make most people realize that Bill Murray was not only a phenomenal actor but an immensely sad one. This breakthrough concept became widely accepted after Murray's supporting turn in Rushmore, as a bored middle-aged man who gets entangled in a love triangle with a teenage boy and the boy's teacher. However, anyone knowledgeable enough with Murray's career knows that he's never truly been a stranger to drama. In the 1980s, he had The Razor's Edge, but his first great role, one that jumped from comedy to something deeper, was Groundhog Day. Yes, this is a comedy, but by the time Murray's main character starts trying to kill himself, it's hard to laugh as much. The movie changes quickly from tone to tone, but Murray's performance is always believable, always relatable.
Since Rushmore, Murray has been a player in all of Anderson's films, whether in a cameo role (The Darjeeling Limited), or as the title character (The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou). He's also received an Academy Award nomination for the 2003 drama Lost in Translation, a movie I find overrated despite Murray's phenomenally deadpan work. If anything, this is an actor who has gotten much, much better with age. That's not to say I would be against Murray starring in another big-budget comedy like Ghostbusters, but if we're going to get Murray in dramatic roles or as the voice of Garfield the cat...well, I hope he's got more live-action roles in the future, I guess.