The New King Of Comedy (2020) - Movie Review

Stephen Chow’s King Of Comedy is a certified classic. One of the most refined examples of Chow’s unique style of Eastern slapstick, it’s basically one of those films that anyone interested in the acting craft needs to watch, as it covers a pretty wide variety of ‘method’ acting, it’s got some of Chow’s best gags (I’m still giggling at the stuntman-on-fire scene as I’m writing this), and I can pretty much guarantee you’ll feel good after watching it. It is, at the time of writing this, my favourite Chow film. Or, rather, it was… until I saw its spiritual successor.

Jim & Andy: The Great Beyond (2017) - Movie Review

Jim Carrey has never really gotten the credit he deserves as a singular being. His grand heyday in the 80’s and 90’s is treated for what it is, him at the peak of his rubber-faced and highly energetic game, but that’s also the big thing associated with him. Now, while I myself personally love the guy’s work in that mode, admitting that also ends up discarding everything else that the man has done on the big screen. It disregards the painfully emotional performance he gave in Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind, or the genuinely confronting portrayal of The Number 23, or the truly perfect depiction he gave of comedic legend Andy Kaufman in Miloš Forman’s 1999 classic Man On The Moon.

It’s as if these two worlds, Jim Carrey as the comedian and Jim Carrey as the actor, never managed to collide in a way that made the world appreciate that he was both. I see it, I recognize it and I consider him my personal favourite actor because of it. I don’t see anything special in making that announcement; I’m just putting my bias right on the table like always before getting into a review (provided I can even be bothered to write an introduction for a review nowadays for admission of bias to even exist in). So, when this documentary about the making of Man On The Moon popped up on NetFlix, it immediately had my attention and I knew I had to cover it before the year was out. But I don’t think anything, not even my pre-existing love for the actor in question, could have prepared me for this.