Quick Change (1990).

He doesn't need much in the way of an introduction at this point.  Bill Murray is one of those names who've managed to carve out a permanent shelf space in the mind of generations of fans by this point.  While it's true he's mostly remembered for his work on the Ghostbusters franchise, the good news there is that this hasn't managed to erase an awareness of the rest of his work as a bonafide comedy legend.  His story is a familiar up to a point.  Bill got his start, so far as most of us are concerned, when he was just this hungry young actor with a talent for comedy, working out of Los Angeles as part of guerilla theater group known as TVTV, when his efforts there and along with his stint working for the National Lampoon Magazine came to the attention of Lorne Michaels.  Since Murray was a Lampoon veteran by this point, having worked extensively as a performer for the Magazine's Radio Hour show, in addition to cutting his teeth as an improv comic at Chicago's Second City Theater under the mentorship of Del Close, winning a spot for himself amongst the original Not Ready for Prime Time Players was as much about genuine talent getting the eventual recognition it deserved, as it had to do with plain good timing.  It was during his time on Michaels' new variety show for NBC, Saturday Night Live, that Murray would put his talents as a comedian to good use, showcasing his now trademark gift for laconic, and laid back wit, combined with an air of confidence and swagger which has since gone on to be considered iconic by fans everywhere.

It was SNL that first showcased Murray's strengths as an artist to the world, and along with fellow Prime Timers Dan Aykroyd and John Belushi, Bill would eventually use the show as the launchpad for what has since become one of the most well-regarded and overall respectable filmographies in the history of cinema.  If there's any complaint to be made there, then it might come from the simple question of how do you categorize someone like him in comparison to peers like Jack Nicholson or Dustin Hoffman?  If I had to take a guess at where his stature lies in the mind of pop culture at the moment, then it's probably safe to assume the guy is still regarded as a legend, or as an example of what's known as comedy gold.  I've got no dispute with that.  All I'm asking myself is what kind of shelf space you would fit him on in a catalogue of names like Leo DiCaprio and Orson Welles.  I'm pretty sure he has to count as being "up there" among the company just mentioned above.  It's just that the nature of pop culture popularity is so precarious that sometimes it sounds like madness to even raise Murray's efforts as an artist up to the same level as the man who gave us Citizen Kane.  At other times, however, it's almost as if Murray is held with a higher regard than men like Welles.  I'm not sure how fair that is, yet I also wouldn't be surprised if it's happened more than once.  From what I can tell, it seems as if Murray's fames is more or less set in stone, with his fortunes and popularity on a steady, undulating tide.

Some days he's eclipsed by other big name talents out there, and then he's back at the forefront holding his own with the greats.  That seems like the best possible assessment so far as his career is concerned.  There's been an equal amount of highs and lows in his filmography, and as time has gone on, most of it seems to have found a way to balance out even enough.  At the top are efforts like the Ghostbusters franchise, with at least two of them being a timeless classic, and a decent enough follow-up.  On the shelf space beneath is where the best of the rest of stored.  It's the slot reserved for the likes of Groundhog Day, Caddyshack, and Stripes, and perhaps maybe the first Zombieland.  The shelf below this one represents his more serious and sober, yet still comedic efforts.  Here is where you find the works he's done for Wes Anderson and the Coen Brothers, such as Rushmore, The Royal Tanenbaums, The Grand Budapest Hotel, and The Fantastic Mr. Fox.  All of the films just listed seem to represent a catalogue of his most well known and best regarded efforts.  Beyond this point, everything seems to be in a state of flux.  A picture like Osmosis Jones, for instance, might have its fans, yet it's clear we're dealing with one of the lesser effort in Bill's filmography.  Somewhere in the middle of all this lies a film that stands as something of an anomaly in the actor's career.  It stands as the one film he's ever sat in the director's chair for.  It's a peculiar sort of comedy caper film, and it's known as Quick Change.

The Story.

Our story starts some time during a normal afternoon in New York.  Commuters are starting arrive home from work, the traffic starts to pick up, and a man in a clown suit is making his way toward midtown Manhattan.  That's not the strangest sight in a place like New York, by the way.  It's a lot like Miami, Florida, in that respect.  While the two cities are miles apart in terms of both culture and location, the one thing that unites each of them is a proud population of freaks, weirdos, and lunes.  All of whom are determined either through boredom, idealism, or else just the grab bag of personal issues rolling around in their heads like weighted dice to make sure that not a day goes by without something interesting happening somewhere in the Apple.  In the case of the clown making his way toward a midtown bank, we're dealing with the third category of behavior mentioned above.  The clown has a name, Jake Grimm (Murray), and once he gets to the bank, he reveals his purpose for the outfit when he draws a gun on the security guard, barges his way inside, and declares that it's a stick-up.  That explains the Ringling Bros. clothing and face paint, though it still leaves us wondering about the crook's motivation.  The story Grimm lays out for the guard and all the bank patrons he takes hostage is the usual sob story.  You're just going through the motions of life like always, and then one day the right sort of wrong thing happens and the inner bolts holding your sanity together fall off like a poorly made piece of armor.  When that shit happens, the only rules left in life's instruction manual are as follows: anything goes.

So, you know, that's what happened to him, and somewhere along the way he had the idea to just walk into a crowded place with a loaded weapon and see if he can't get a little something out of it for himself.  When the security guard asks, "What kind of clown are you?", Grimm replies, "The crying on the inside kind, I guess".  That's probably not a lie, so far as it goes, yet it's also not the whole story either.  A deal like this didn't just spring up out of the blue.  It also wasn't cooked up over the course of one madness fueled night, either.  Instead, the full story of Jake Grimm is, as always, a familiar one.  He's this low-level flunky, is all.  A number cruncher born and raised in the Big Apple, and while he can't claim to be a victim of the city's rotten side, he's always never managed to make his fortunes work out well, either.  He's managed to find someone for himself; that's true enough.  She's a girl named Phyllis Potter (Geena Davis), and while it's never spelled out, it's sort of implied that they met at the same workspace, wherever that was, and sort of struck up the kind of friendship that was soon on the way to being more than just the casual sort of relationship.  In addition, there's also Loomis (Randy Quaid) another friend of Jake's, this one since childhood.  The implication there is that Jake is one of life's natural born losers.  He's the kind of fellow that circles the drain even fresh out of the womb.

It's this weird sort of self-perpetuating momentum that leads right over the proverbial cliff unless someone steps in to halt the progress, and Jake seems to have been that person for Loomis.  All three of our main protagonists have managed to keep each other afloat, and yet it's clear to them all that they're living unfulfilled lives, and so they've all grown just bored, alienated, and desperate enough so that the idea of trying to get away with a bank robbery sounds just crazy enough to make sense.  What makes this scheme different from a lot of others like it is the care and clever bit of subterfuge that goes into the planning of the heist.  The first part of the plan is one that happens with the bank itself being none the wiser.  Before Grimm even arrives, Phyl and Loomis have already arrived as a pair of normal looking customers there to conduct what seems like perfectly legal business.  Grimm will walk in not long after them, complete with Barnum getup and everything.  From there, they'll put on a performance for the rest of the hostages, playing up the whole lone nut angle for the sake of witnesses.  Loo and Phyllis will help out at this point by playing the part of scared shitless bystander and woman who is unlucky enough to start catching the robber's eye.  Grimm will then sequester them all in a nearby vault, and Phyl and Loo will keep the "audience" invested in the little bit of "street theater" they've got going.

While his friends are busy playing for the groundlings, Jake himself will begin the second half of his own performance.  This one is geared to an audience of one, the police.  To be specific, it's directed at the cadre of cops sent to deal with the situation once Grimm lets them know of the deal he's cooked up.  In particular, he ends up performing mostly for just one man, police chief Walt Rotzinger, the man tasked with trying to de-escalate the situation, and try to bring the clown to justice.  Through a careful bit of well played theatrics, Grimm manages to convince Rotzinger to give in to an increasingly absurd level of demands to the point where he manipulates the cops into creating just the escape route he's looking for.  This comes in the form of sending out first Loo, who proceeds to paint a dire picture of a deranged madman waving a gun around and threating to kill everyone unless he gets what he wants, followed by Grimm promising the police to release two more hostages.  It's here the titular quick change takes place.  It involves Grimm heading back into the vault in full clown gear to collect Phyllis, under the impression that he's there to release just her, before locking the rest of the hostages inside the vault.

With this done, all Grimm needs is a quick washup up to get rid of the circus make up, followed a change of cloths and some false hair and mustache, and then he and Phyl simply run out of the bank's front door and into the waiting and helpful hands of NYPD's finest, who promptly escort them to the rescue ambulance.  It's there that the final act of the performance takes place, as Grimm puts on what is basically a riff on the same performance Loomis gave earlier, first for the hostages, and then for Rotzinger and his men.  Convinced that the two are just a pair of innocent victims, they are allowed to go free.  This allows the robbers to meet up with Loomis, who is now waiting for them in their getaway car, and the two evade the police with plenty of time to spare, having fooled everyone into believing a false scenario is real when it was, in fact, fiction this whole time.  So now, having fooled both the police and the public, and having made off with a generous amount of money, which was the real goal of the entire performance from the start, it now seems as if our trio of determined anti-heroes are about to make a well-timed escape.  Instead, first they get turned around looking for the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway because all of the signposts pointing the way were taken down due to the neighborhood they're driving undergoing a crucial bit of the city's much vaunted Urban Renewal program.

It might have done the Apple a world of good in the long run, yet right now all Grimm and his compatriots can think about is how easy it is to get turned around in Gotham without a sign to point the way, and they need to get to the airport on time or else they run the very high risk of getting caught.  So begins an odyssey through America's premier urban jungle, as a trio of robbers must now try to navigate their way through the streets of New York as they attempt to reach a scheduled take-off at JFK.  It's a circuitous, one might almost say absurdist route that involves such obstacles as a schizophrenic apartment tenant, an anal-retentive bus driver, the fire department wrecking their getaway car (long story), and to just to make things interesting, a now pissed off Rotzinger is hot on their heals, looking to dish out more than just a fair bit of justice.  Never let it be said there's ever a dull moment in New York.

Conclusion: An Ambitious Failure.

It starts off on a high note.  I've got to give the film that much credit.  From the moment Nat King Cole's L-O-V-E starts to tune up on the soundtrack, and we pan through an opening shot of a series of bored and disaffected faces on a busy NYC subway car, until at last we come to rest on Murray in full clown getup is as close to a pitch-perfect way to open a film like this.  It works very well if you happen to be a longtime fan of the man and his work.  Murray builds on the strength of that opening shot by then letting his character get entangled in a mass of commuters barging their way onto the subway, leaving him with a struggle to just get out.  It's clear the former SNL alum is having a good bit of fun at the expense of the typical New Yorker attitude to unusual sights, and its this bit of amusing energy that manages to carry itself all the way into the bank heist scenes.  Even as we're treated to a series of shots featuring Murray the Clown making his way through the streets of Manhattan, I can remember the vividness of my reaction to that opening moment, and the thought that came with it: "Gosh, I've missed this son of a bitch!"  It's in these opening moments that Murray is able to craft a kind of tribute to particular brand of comedy that he's most famous for, and which he also helped to create.  

To watch those opening minutes of Quick Change is to be reminded of the potential richness that could go hand in glove with kind of style that used to define the comedy films of the 1980s.  Since this film was released just one year after Ghostbusters II, there is a sense in which it's something of a holdover from that same time period.  It's got the same vibe as those old SNL/John Hughes productions that have more less defined 80s humor.  There's plenty of wild moments to go around, yet it's also handled in a way that's different from the kind of approaches we're used to now.  Rather than going for the in-your-face gross out approach of shows like South Park, Murray's style of comedy is willing to allow space for a scene to be carried along by nothing more than witty banter and clever dialogue.  It's the same Second City improvisational approach that defined the rhythm and pacing of the original Ghostbusters films, and is the main reason the franchise and its stars remain so iconic to this day.  These are all hallmarks of what makes Murray such a talented actor and comedian, and the movie's first act is where all of these traits are allowed to show their strengths in the best possible light.  Sadly, however, it's after the end of the first act that the rest of the film begins.  That's also where all the trouble starts.

Once the plot ditches the bank and the clown suit, what we're left with is the aftermath of a typical heist film.  There's a complete and total irony to the setup Murray and Co. find themselves in, because it just now occurs to me that it's more or less the same setup as Quentin Tarantino's Reservoir Dogs.  That's another film centering around what happens when a bank robbery goes "Snake Eyes" on the people who orchestrated it.  The major difference is one of genre, and hence of tone.  The story Tarantino has to tell is a straight up Noir inspired crime film, with bits and pieces of Action cinema thrown in.  Murray's escapades take that same setup, and turn it into an SNL skit.  His problem is that he can't seem to find as many ways of making the slow unraveling of what seemed like a brilliant plan sound interesting in the same way that Quentin did.  Now, for the record, it is still possible to argue that I'm not being fair here.  Even if the plots of both films are similar in terms of basic premise, there's still a world of difference between them due to the demands of their respective genres.  The kind of film Tarantino makes is lean, mean, and takes no prisoners.  It's an early breakout example of the director's Grindhouse sensibilities updated in this case perfectly in a way that was digestible for 90s audiences.  Murray, by contrast, is still just this Second City Lampoon kid doing what he's always done best.  There's no comparing the two.

Besides which, Murray's film came out in 1990.  Quentin's didn't arrive on the scene until 92.  There's no way Murray could have known about that.  If anything, it begs the question of whether the Pulp Fiction maestro might have been inspired by the ex-Ghostbuster's work.  This shouldn't even be looked at in terms of apples and oranges, in that case.  So why complain about it?  The catch here is that it is more than possible to agree to all of those objects, and it still leaves the problem of quality unaddressed.  Just because two films share a remarkable (and in hindsight, somewhat hilarious) amount of similarities, there's still the question of how well the stories are told to take into consideration.  Nothing is more possible than a good idea with a poor execution.  It's one of those maxims that applies to life in general, when you stop an think it over.  This includes the realm of storytelling just as much as the rest of it, and in Murray's case the problem isn't a matter of mere genre, but of story telling.  In other words, it's how well the director handles the plot that counts.  The script was written by Howard Franklin, yet I get the impression that Murray helped out himself as well, even if his efforts go uncredited in the final product.  It's not unusual for writer having his name left off the credits.  It's an often standard practice that goes all the way back to the Golden Age of Cinema, and we'll have reasons to discuss a particular type of film from that Old Time period in a minute.  For now, it's enough to speculate that it's not out of bounds to believe Murray had a shaping hand in writing the final script.

If you stop and consider we're talking about the same guy who helped come up with the concept of the movie Caddyshack, then it's no real leap of logic to believe he might be an uncredited screenwriter on this piece.  The interesting thing about his efforts on Quick Change is what it reveals about his own personal tastes as a comedian.  This is the only film Murray ever sat in the director's chair for.  That means its an opportunity to get a good idea of what his style of comedy is like unfiltered in its own, basic nature.  I'm just not so sure it showcases all his strengths in the best light.  Perhaps the way he handles the remainder of the film's plot is good demonstration of what I mean.  After the fun exuberance of the bank heist, the rest of the movie amounts to the viewer having to follow along as Murray and his new gang of compatriots stumble their way from one comedic set piece to the next as they try and make their way to the airport.  What happens after the relatively straightforward opening is that the very nature of the story does an abrupt shift from a proper narrative to something almost akin to a series of sketch comedies.  There's a strand of plot left that threads its way from one situation to the next.  However, it's clear that once we've left the bank, the film becomes a different sort of beast altogether.

One of the unforeseen results of this literal quick change is that is that it might be a key reason for why the narrative begins to lose its sense of forward momentum.  In other words, the change of setting also amounts to a change in the type of story Murray is telling, and also a shift in the way it gets told.  The opening act is its own neat little comedic thriller with hinted elements of psycho-drama waiting to be explored.  It sets up a premise that grabs your attention immediately, and part of the fun of how it does so is through grounding the action in a fundamentally ungrounded personality.  Our first glimpse of Murray in the film leads us to believe we're going to be looking at some off the wall comedy version of a Taxi Driver story.  Its witty, funny, fascinating, and its does what all good storytelling should do.  It makes us want to know what happens next.  In retrospect, it might be that Murray and Franklin wrote this opening a bit too well for the rest of the movie's own good.  Because once you've ditched the essentially straightforward nature of the opening act, the set pieces you're left with aren't as involving as the false start we were teased with when the curtain rose, and we've lost all sense of a proper narrative that is moving things along with a gripping forward momentum.  Instead, when I describe what comes after as a series of set pieces, I mean just that.  It's as if Murray got cold feet and tried to play it safe.

After chugging along with a fine bit of Inspiration on his hands, it was like all Venkman could do is look on in dismay as the well ran dry, and in desperation he fell back on doing what he knew how to do best: being a sketch comedy performer.  Now, to be fair, this is a creative choice that has worked for former SNL alumni in the past.  If that weren't the case, then a film like Blues Brothers wouldn't be the well-regarded musical that it is today.  The difference between a film like that and Quick Change is that Aykroyd and Belushi have constructed a plot that functions as a complete and total whole.  While Jake and Elwood do careen from one comic encounter to another, Aykroyd's script makes sure that all of these moments are welded together in a way that doesn't cause any sense of disjunction in the narrative.  Instead, the logic of the plot remains intact as we follow the Brothers from one dire strait to the next.  Each of which emerges as a logical part of the predicaments the protagonists find themselves in.

You just don't get that same sense of seamless narrative flow with this film.  Instead, it's as if Murray, Davis, and Quaid are stuck wandering in and out of various scenes from a bunch of entirely different movies altogether.  First it's a rom-com type scenario about two couples swapping an apartment.  Next thing you know, we're involved in a Mafia story.  Then that thread is dropped and we're back to Murray and the gang be chased by Jason Robards.  The whole thing just goes on like this, with perhaps the funniest moments in the film belonging to a demented bus driver, and a taxi pilot played by Tony Shalube.  The trouble is there's very little holding all these desperate plot elements in any kind of dramatic unity.  That's because Murray struggles to make the elements of the script gel together like Aykroyd was able to with the misadventures of Elwood and Jake.  Venkman makes the mistake of relying on the kind of "Here's a sketch - now here's a different kind of sketch" approach which is still common to this day for SNL.  The trouble is what works in a variety show doesn't function quite so well as a single, straightforward story, as opposed to a sketch.  It's a vital distinction which Murray seems to have overlooked here, and that proves to be the movie's fatal mistake.  It's little wonder then if the final results that end up on screen cause the film to come off as a disjointed and often meandering mess.

While my overall takeaway experience from this film was that of a letdown, there is at least one scrap of educational value to be had from it.  One of the unexpected benefits this film holds for cinema history enthusiasts is that it offers a sort of crash course look into the influences that shape the artistry of the artist.  In this case, what I was surprised to discover was just how much of an influence the Marx Brothers were on Bill Murray.  That might not sound like an obvious claim to make for anyone who is a longtime fan of 80s Brat Pack/SNL humor.  The two forms of comedy seem miles apart at first glance.  One of them is the most successful and iconic example of early 20th century screwball humor.  The latter, meanwhile, was an amalgamated result of the Stand-up Comic Boom of the 50s and 60s, where artists like Richard Pryor, George Carlin, Redd Foxx, and Lenny Bruce all reshaped what you could say and do in a comedic format.  Meanwhile, Murray and a lot of his friends and future co-stars were doing very much the same thing with the art of sketch comedy in venues like the aforementioned Second City improv theater, along with other outlets such as the National Lampoon Radio Hour.  Considering how rude, crude, and cutting edge the comedy of this time could be, it's understandable if it's a bit hard to believe someone like Pete Venkman would look up to a trio of old vaudevillians for Inspiration.

At least it would seem unlikely until you stop and factor a number of things into the equation.  To start off with, there's the testimony of Murray's fellow Ghostbuster Harold Ramis.  Egon had a constant complaint about his work on Caddyshack in his later years.  He always felt that the final product wasn't the film he set out to make.  Harold always griped that instead of filming the movie as scripted, Murray and his co-stars Chevy Chase and Rodney Dangerfield basically began to improv all over the place, and in the process, according to Ramis, they managed to turn it into a Marx Brothers film.  Each of the films main lead stars would commandeer the style of one of the Brothers for themselves.  Dangerfield would be Groucho, Chase was a more smug and laid back version of Chico, while Murray, in this case ironically, took the part of a verbalizing, yet very deranged version of Harpo.  Once you take Ramis's testimony into consideration, then the overall nature of Caddyshack begins to make sense and fall into place.  You can see how its a film that's ultimately being steered by its three main performers into a 1980s version of the sort of screwball comedy that Marxes were famous for.  It's just that this time the whole routine is being given an 80s era, National Lampoon/SNL inspired style face-lift update.

It sort of begs the question of why does that older film work where Quick Change doesn't.  If both films run on the premise of the cast jettisoning the script in favor of improv comedy, then why hasn't this overlooked heist comedy achieved the same status as Ghostbusters and the Shack?  Well, keep in mind, this is just a guess.  However, I think if you go back and look at the one thing those two other films have in common, then you'll understand maybe why things didn't got so well this time around.  Murray didn't have to go it alone on those other vehicles.  Instead, he was always part of an ensemble of comedic talent, one that was comfortable with each other through a long time of collaboration and friendship which allowed everyone to get to know each other, and figure out how to navigate everyone's rough edges.  This time Bill just didn't have that sort of backup to bounce off of.  It seems that so long as he has his fellow Not Ready for Prime Time Players in his corner, then it's like he's got a group that can help keep his comedy well directed and moving along in a way that makes dramatic sense.  We see him trying to do the same thing with Quick Change, and yet it's clear that he's sort of lost and struggling without the guidance that comes from input with cast members like Aykroyd and Ramis.  To demonstrate this, compare how Ray Stanz fairs on his own in a movie such as The Great Outdoors. 

It's not the greatest John Hughes film out there, yet it works well enough as a coherent bit of comedy.  Part of the reason it works out so well is because while Aykroyd thrives in the same environment of improvisational humor as Murray, he's also more willing to trust the overall direction of the script if it seems good enough, and thus makes sure to cater his style of comedy as close as possible in service to the story.  This is an important point to note, because it's a valuable lesson the Marx Brothers themselves learned over time.  They started out as just a comedy act without a plot and capering about from one joke to the other.  What they soon realized is that the more they grounded their jokes in a plot scenario that audiences could care about, the more they began to get better notices in the press and, most importantly, at the box office.  They took this lesson to heart, and as a result, one of the reasons we still love these comedians from a bygone age is because they are aware that longform humor often works best when it's in the service of a compelling enough narrative.  The story doesn't have to be Citizen Kane.  It just has to be coherent enough to support the jokes you attach to it.  If you can get a solid plot baseline in place, then you can use it as a prop to hang any number of punchlines onto.

This is what accounts for the pop culture icon status of a film like Ghostbusters.  All of that movie's humor is anchored by a solid and intriguing premise that manages to pull off one of the most difficult meldings in showbusiness, a solid unity between Comic and Horror effects.  Since he's in a collaboration on that picture, Murray has friends and co-stars around who can help keep him grounded, and point out where the humor should go, and the film benefits immeasurably for it.  As a final example of how this works, compare the way Murray ends up stumbling around on the set of Quick Change, to the consummate professionalism he brings to the screen just a few years later in Groundhog Day.  That film is often cited as the other highlight of the actor's career, and with plenty of good reason.  The key thing to note, however, is that once more it's a film that sees Bill under the guidance of one of his friends.  In that case, it's Harold Ramis who is behind the camera once more, and who seems to be the most responsible for getting Murray to bring out a genuine sense of humanism and warmth from underneath his usual gruff and caustic facade.  The result is something of a latter day Frank Capra film, and it somehow works thanks to a man who is perhaps best described as the Groucho Marx of the X, Y, and Z generations.  It all just goes to prove, however, that Murray needed help on Quick Change, and he never got it.  That's the best explanation I've got for why this film failed to take off with such good idea.

It's because the plot needed an extra bit of consideration, and Murray needed to figure out what sort of concepts would have helped to bring this film to completion.  He either needed some input from his friends, or else just more time to come up with better material on his own.  Whatever the case, there's something lacking in this movie, and the reasons gone through above seem to be the best explanation for why that is.  It means Quick Change exists not just as a lesser, or forgotten entry in Bill Murray's career.  It's also one of those films which is kind enough to explain why people tend to not remember it all that well, except in bits and pieces.  When anyone bothers to think about it at all, the thing they remember most is anything to do with the opening act, where Murray gives what can only be described as a more light-hearted take on the same material that Joaquin Phoenix would turn to gold in the first Joker movie.  In retrospect, maybe the best course of action would have been for the Murray give us his own riff on that same idea.  It doesn't have to be connected to the Batman mythos.  It can just be this psycho-drama that somehow also manages to make us laugh.  As things stand, I'm afraid I'll have to give Quick Change a pass.  Bill Murray is a great comic talent, yet this is one of his lesser efforts.