Real Life (1979)

Excellent, smart action film.

A waste of 90 minutes of my life

It’s an especially fun movie from a director and cast who are clearly having a good time allowing themselves to let loose.

A lot of perfectly good film show their cards early, establish a unique premise and let the audience explore a topic at a leisurely pace, without much in terms of surprise. this film is not one of those films.

In his most thorough feat of self-deprecation, Albert Brooks plays himself as a smarmy upstart Hollywood director charged with filming a real-life portrait of an "ordinary" Phoenix family to be financed by the Boulder Institute for Behavioral Science. Taking as its satirical subject the PBS series "An American Family", Real Life's opening text scroll includes an excerpt from a media critic that reads (paraphrasing), "This is a whole new method of anthropological research…as interpreted by the camera." It's the last part, "interpreted by the camera," that clearly interests Brooks. In detailing the crumbling of the family and the director's process of selecting what to shoot and how (it isn't long before he's staging scenes), Brooks shows how the mere presence of the camera shapes a new reality for spectator and subject. Their first dinner under camera (the technicians wear ridiculous astronaut-like helmet devices over the top halves of their bodies) has Charles Grodin trying to present his perfect family, but his stressed-out wife gives a hilariously blunt assessment of her feelings. (Meanwhile, Brooks wonders whether his leading man is coming across as unsympathetic.) The institute's naïve statisticians don't see the folly of their pursuit until Brooks makes the film his blatant vanity project; the comic highpoint is a montage of happy, slow-motion family moments that Brooks narrates ("I'll show the French what a montage really is!"). In this project, all are delusional, from the quixotic scientists who fatuously hired Hollywood talent for a film about reality to the unseen producer who makes money the inappropriate subject of every conversation. And film-making, like all profit-driven endeavors, is subject to self-interest, rendering futile the entire notion of the camera as objective recorder. But try telling that to a Hollywood producer.

There's no question that Albert Brooks is not for everybody - his particular blend of neuroticism and egomania can be way too much for most people. But if you can get on his wavelength, and when he's at his best - oh man! There's absolutely no one better. Real Life is Brooks' best movie, and deserves to be more widely known than it is. His portrayal of a controlling producer, who is willing to violate not only broadcast ethics but the standards of decency and good sense as well in order to inject life into his failing "documentary" is frightening, off-putting and truly hilarious all at once.When I first saw this movie, I didn't realize it was based on an actual television experiment. I bring this up only because when I first saw the film, I felt its only flaw was that it didn't spend enough time showing the family and their disintegration in front of the cameras, choosing instead to focus almost exclusively on Brooks and his manic responses to the dilemma this posed. However, knowing that the real life experiment would have already been familiar to people, Brooks clearly wanted to use this movie to examine not the family but the bankrupt commercial mindset which would put such a project into play in the first place. As such, his satire is dead on and nobody could more perfectly embody the entertainment industry than Brooks himself. Just to see him smarmily singing and glad-handing at the beginning is worth the cost.

'Real life' is the perfect send-up of the worst scenario possible for a film maker shooting a documentary, i.e., what happens when your subject matter loses interest in the project before completion? Albert Brooks, as the seemingly besieged director of this 'loaf of reality' year long vigil with a typical American family, walks a fine line between egomania and neuroticism and scores with broad belly laughs both ways. Charles Grodin as the head of the suburban clan from which this film within a film emanates exudes his special brand of bland exuberance at the beginning of this captive camera stakeout inside his home(and everywhere else he may go) provided his life is depicted as letter perfect from day to day. When such is not the case and the obtrusive lenses are interfering with his job as a veterinarian, (in a sequence that has to be seen rather than described) then Grodin regards the camera presence as nothing more than an albatross and mentally switches himself off. Albert Brooks, meanwhile, never says quit. Every so-called hair in the eye of the lense is still a perfect scene regardless of the participation or lack of it, thereof, from his celluloid family. For Brooks regards this film as 'paramount'(oops) over the desires of his cast of characters. Brooks facile mind works methodically from beginning to end. From his perspective, nothing can go wrong, everything is in its place with a place for everything. So when his documentary and the human equation around it blow up in his face , his conferences with colleagues are hilarious as he tries various remedies to salvage not only his project but his self-image. Brooks is a comic delight as a man who cannot take criticism regarding his methods and his interaction with project staff are decidedly one-sided, but in the capable hands of this farceur, his myopic viewpoint is always good for guffaws galore. Real life should be this funny.

This movie killed me! I got it off the PVT sale rack at Blockbuster. A major find, if you ask me. You can't even begin to describe Albert Brooks' humor. It's so complex, you have to see it to understand. Once you understand, you'll laugh your head off!