I reveiwed the movie Lost in America some months back, and found it not as good as a lot of the critics seem to think it is. Then, on one of the movie channels on I think PlutoTV, I saw another of Albert Brooks' films show up: Modern Romance. I gave up on this one after maybe a half hour because it just wasn't funny. So it was with some trepidation that I sat down to watch my recording of Albert Brooks' directorial debut, Real Life.
Albert Brooks got the idea for this from an early 1970s PBS documentary series, An American Family, which focused on a real family in California. Apparently, the family's consent to having PBS come in and record a whole lot of their personal interactions had a profound effect on the family, and not for the better. In Real Life, Brooks plays a documentary filmmaker named Albert Brooks, contending that his new film is about to change forever what film can be, as it's going to show real life.
The movie starts off with Brooks leading a press conference in the rapidly-growing metropolis of Phoenix, AZ (the city population at the time is about half what is is today while the metropolitan area is three times the size it was hen the movie was made). Brooks and his crew are announcing that they've picked a family from Phoenix to do their documentary on "real life" about; the family isn't introduced because they've been sent on vacation to give the crew time to prepare. Brooks concludes the conference with a song that makes no sense but you get the sense Brooks thought people would find funny.
We then get an extended back story about the Institute for Human Behavior and how they conceived a study and picked the family, as well as all the pseudoscientific stuff that's going to go into making a documentary like this about a family. As for Brooks himself, he buys a house across the street from the selected family, the Yeagers, in order to set up shop. He's working with a psychologist, Dr. Cleary, while having regular contact with the researchers from the Institute as their experiment is supposed to run an entire year.
Needless to say, the experiment doesn't go as planned. On the Yeagers' first night back, Mrs. Yeager seems depressed, and decides that she's going to have the implanted birth-control device removed. Eventually she calls Brooks, who decides to take the totally unprofessional step of having a "private" (well, with cameras in tow) conversation with her, convincing her to let the cameras in on the appointment with her gynecologist, who, in turn, was the subject of a 60 Minutes exposé some years prior.
As for Mr. Yeager (Charles Grodin), he's a veterinarian who seems to have started off more positive about the idea of the documentary. But his wife's depression has a strain on him, as he accidentally ODs a horse during surgery, killing the horse and leaving him depressed for several weeks. Things continue to spiral out of control, with matters finally coming to a head when local news figures out (really? It took them this long?) what family is being filmed and starts following the family themselves.
Surprisingly, for once I'm in agreement with Roger Ebert about a movie. He really hated Real Life, and I didn't care for it either. It's supposed to be a mockumentary, which implies comedy. But most of the comedy doesn't work. Brooks' character is also terribly self-centered and obnoxious, starting with that song in the opening scene. The script also fails in that Brooks seems to have had no idea how to resolve the conflict at the heart of the movie. There's also a race-relations scene between him and the Dr. Cleary character that brings the movie to a screeching halt.
But, as I implied at the beginning, there are people who really seem to love Brooks' films, not that he directed that many. So if you liked Lost in America, you might be the sort of person who will like Real Life.
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