Lenny

Another of the movies that has a very high reputation that I'd never actually seen before is Lenny, a biopic of controversial (at least for the times) comedian Lenny Bruce. TCM ran it some months back, which gave me the chance to record it and finally be able to watch it and do a review of it.

The movie is told in the style of a biographer trying to do a documentary on Bruce (1925-1966), although of course Bruce had been dead for several years by the time the movie was being made and the documentarian in the movie was getting his material. He's talking to Honey (Valerie Perrine), the late wife of Lenny (Dustin Hoffman). She mentions that she first met Lenny in the early 1950s when she was a burlesque dancer, to put it nicely, and Lenny was a struggling up-and-coming comedian. Flash back to those years.

Well, to be honest, we've already seen a bit of Lenny's routines from later in his career, using naughty language and talking about controversial topics like venereal disease. These routines would cause a bunch of arrests on obscenities charges, as Honey mentioned in her opening discussion with the biographer. Honey also mentions that there were several arrests for narcotics possession. Bruce had all sorts of difficulties with drugs, and died of a drug overdose at the age of 40.

Along the way, Lenny and Honey have a kid together, and Lenny tries to get clean, and even make a bigger success out of Honey. It causes quite a rift between the two, and Honey winds up having her own problems with drugs.

Bruce goes back to his stand-up routines, but he's increasingly adding both social commentary and pushing the boundaries, daring the authorities to arrest him. This leads to arrests both in New York (he was eventually given a posthumous pardon in 2003, something which the film obviously couldn't mention since it was made in 1974), and goes out to California and gets arrested on obscenity charges there as well. This makes him more obsessed with dealing with his own demons on stage as part of his comedy act. Personally, I can't help but wonder whether that would make his comedy less appealing. It sounds like material that would have been better suited to a one-man stage show in a traditional theater than the nightclubs of the day.

Having said all that, I think Lenny is the sort of movie that's going to sharply divide audiences. It's easy to see why a movie like this got a bunch of Oscar nominations. Hoffman and Perrine are both excellent, and the black-and-white cinematography works well for the movie. On the other hand, Lenny is unrelentingly downbeat, and the obscenity didn't always work. Not that he should have been arrested for it, mind you, but looking back nearly 50 years from when the movie was made, and another decade or more from when the routines were delivered, they're not as funny or daring. But since it's not the sort of movie that's going to be for everyone, it's even more the sort of movie you'll need to watch and judge for yourself.