Steve Rose 

Misery Loves Comedy review – shop-talk doc with Fallon, Coogan and Schumer

This choppy documentary, featuring everyone from Tom Hanks to Judd Apatow, takes longer than any decent comic would to get to its punchline
  
  

Misery Loves Comedy, featuring micro-anecdotes from funny people such as Amy Schumer
Meh … Misery Loves Comedy, featuring micro-anecdotes from funny people such as Amy Schumer Photograph: PR

Do you have to be sad to be funny? You’ll have to sit through a slew of micro-anecdotes and shop talk before you get any answers from this choppy documentary – longer than any decent comic would defer a punchline. It’s stitched together from what look like two-minute hotel-room interviews with well-known funny people (including Tom Hanks, Amy Schumer, Steve Coogan, Judd Apatow) and longer talks with less well-known ones. There are occasional moments of insight or comedy, such as Christopher Guest demonstrating his teacher-baiting ventriloquism, but the attention-deficit, topic-by-topic format becomes tiresome, added to which director Kevin Pollak has an annoying habit of interrupting interviewees with gags of his own – surely a breach of the comedians’ code?

Watch the Misery Loves Comedy trailer – video
 

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