Punchline [HD]

Underrated, almost brilliant, but flawed
Punchline begins with an engaging premise. Steven Gold (Tom Hanks at age 31) is a med student driven by his physician father to become a doctor. But Steven hates medical school, can't stand the sight of blood, etc. Instead of going to class, he goes to the local comedy club (The Gas Station). Instead of doing his homework, he does standup. He's very good. Lilah Krytsick (Sally Field at 42) is a frumpy Jersey housewife with three kids and a husband (John Goodman) who sells insurance. He wants her to stay home nights, but she has a passion for wanting to make people laugh. So she too moonlights at The Gas Station. She is not funny. In desperation she spends five hundred dollars of household funds to buy jokes to use on the audience. Everything bombs.

Meanwhile, Steven is a little behind in his rent and thinks that, what the hey, he can sell Lilah some jokes. But it never comes to that. Instead he becomes enchanted with her and helps her break free of her inhibitions and...

Tom Hanks looks so young!
I caught this film on HBO or Showtime the other night, after not having seen it in years and I have to say that it's better than I remembered it. I totally loved the non-standup comedy details of the film- Hanks making comments about "going under" as he tries in vein to clean himself up before going onstage after not having taken a shower in awhile due to the fact that he's been kicked out of his apartment, Sally Field's portrayol of a woman wanting more in her life than just motherhood, etc. You really get the feeling that these are real people with dreams and you want to root for them, hoping that they'll "make it". I found myself getting nervous before each of their stand up performances. Anyway, great film, highly recommended.

It's more than a film on comedy club
Chaplin said comedy is tragedy plus time. I love the character Tom Hanks plays, a medical student who fears blood and would not have opted for learning in surgery but for his parental instructions. What really moves me is not the lines (they are funny) but the philiosophy the whole film brings out - be yourself, always.

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