Written and directed by Albert Brooks

Starring: Albert Brooks, Sheetal Sheth, John

Carroll Lynch and Tony Montero

99 minutes

Along with Jerry Lewis and Howard Stern, I have spent the greater portion of my adult life defending the comic (and at times cosmic) genius of Albert Brooks. The reasons why most Americans shun spastic Jerry and gamy Howard are fairly obvious: People either dislike them or they hate them. Certainly Albert doesn’t provoke the same sense of disregard. From the start, he was branded an “acquired taste”.

Had the “comedian’s comedian” stuck to supper clubs and the small screen, he still would have earned a spot right alongside Ernie Kovacs in the comedic Pantheon. With Real Life, Modern Romance and Lost in America, Brooks forged a vision and persona that heralded a mastery of cinematic form and elevated him to the ranks of comic auteurs Buster Keaton, Jacques Tati and, gulp, Jerry Lewis.

As in all classic film comedies, the setup of Looking for Comedy in the Muslim World is a simple one: In order to bring about peace and understanding through laughter, Brooks is asked by the government to travel to Pakistan to compile an ominous 500-page report on what makes the locals laugh. With the possible exception of the “SCTV” gang, no one understands, and, in an unsanitary way, enjoys old (ancient?) school showbiz superficiality more than Albert. LFCITMW could be the finest Bob Hope vehicle that the violently unfunny ski-nose never made. With feet firmly planted at the altar of “The Jack Benny Program,” Albert plays an ostensibly autobiographical character, well-versed in the art of rehearsed showbiz spontaneity, named Albert Brooks. The ersatz Albert has a wife and daughter, and while Brooks (nee, Einstein) is married, he has yet to produce an off-screen offspring.

It’s not just the passing generations of sincerely insincere comics that Brooks revels in ripping apart. He obviously knows what a perfect target Penny Marshall is. (Does she?) Anybody could (and did) direct Big. Jumpin’ Jack Flash (Brooks contemptuously displays the poster) and particularly Awakenings are abominations of cinema, and the notion that A League of Their Own probably grossed more than all of Albert’s directorial efforts combined is sick-making. It is the talent-free Ms. Marshall’s refusal to “see” Albert in the Jimmy Stewart role for a remake of Harvey (compounded by a boatload of self-deprecating The In-Laws barbs) that sets Brooks on the road to Pakistan.

Unlike Woody Allen, who constantly relies on verbal and visual digressions (surprisingly, there are few of either in Match Point), Brooks employs an unobstructed, straightforward point-of-view structure. With a pair of government foils (John Carroll Lynch and Tony Montero) to guide him, we rationally observe every step of Albert’s two-month pilgrimage. He secures an assistant (the doe-eyed, effervescent Sheetal Sheth), sets up shop in a ramshackle building and reasons that the surest way to gauge a culture’s sense of humor is to put on a show, hit them with everything you’ve got and see where the laughs fall.

Brooks’ on-screen persona was never really all that likable. In order to add drama to his reality-TV forerunner Real Life, Brooks decides to burn down his subjects’ home. There is nothing even remotely cute, cuddly or Alvy Singer-like in his hilariously unflattering Modern Romance, and his egocentric yearnings to “touch an Indian” in Lost in America prove as illusory as they are amusing. This time around, Brooks presents a self-eviscerating overview of his career and no one is more aware of their “Q” rating (the measure of a celebrity’s name recognition) than Albert. Hindis might not place the face, but everyone knows the voice of Nemo’s father!

To discuss the film any further would result in revealing too many gags and laugh-lines. It’s been ages since filmmakers took comedy seriously enough to actually attempt a breakdown of just what makes us laugh. Preston Sturges’ Sullivan’s Travels was one of the first films to put laughter under a microscope, and Jerry Lewis continues to explain comedy every Labor Day. Last year’s The Aristocrats renewed the trend, and leave it to Albert, the most intelligent comedy mind currently at work behind a camera, to up the ante.

Don’t let the title deter you as it did Sony Pictures, who refused to release it under its current name. At a time when movie comedy has coarsened to the point where wedding crashers and 40-year old virgins are as good as it gets, God bless Albert Brooks (and Warner Independent) for bringing logic back to laughter.

Written and directed by Woody Allen

Starring: Jonathan Rhys-Meyers, Scarlett

Johansson, Emily Mortimer and Brian Cox

124 minutes

One need only do a side-by-side comparison of Modern Romance and Annie Hall to understand which film packs more honesty, structural resonance and mise-en-scene. Albert is now, always has been and always will be Woody’s cinematic superior. Woody’s recurring themes are all cerebral, and visually speaking, the major difference between the “early, funny films” and his later dramas can be traced to the director’s ability to eventually afford imposing cinematographers. Without the collaboration of a quality d. p., Small Time Crooks, Allen’s comedic nadir, shows zero structural or visual advancement over Take the Money and Run, his 1968 directorial debut.

Not all great comedic directors are formally faultless (Preston Sturges and Frank Capra come to mind), and therefore should be studied for their ability to draw on laughter as a means of chipping away at societal pretense. Woody Allen may not be the big, bad Jewish intellectual middle America perceives, but he is definitely an above-average thinker with a devastating sense of humor. Woody’s my cranky celluloid rabbi, and I am always eager and curious to hear his observations on the modern world

Of the 38 features Woody has directed, only seven qualify as dramas (Interiors, September, Another Woman, Shadows and Fog, Crimes and Misdemeanors, Husbands and Wives and now Match Point). It is interesting to note that Crimes and Misdemeanors is the only one of his serious pictures to focus on Jews. Perhaps it’s our innate ability to rely on humor to ease life’s tragedies that causes Woody to leave the hardcore suffering to the goyim

Jonathan Rhys-Meyers and Scarlett Johansson (two of the best pairs of lips in the business) meet and eventually carry on a torrid affair. He’s a well-heeled tennis pro (shades of Strangers on a Train) who marries above his station and quickly becomes ensconced in his father-in-law’s business. She’s an expatriate, soon-to-be ex-fiancé of Rhys-Meyers’ brother-in-law, and a starving actress. Rhys-Meyers’ unfulfilled promise to divorce wife Emily Mortimer (a superb performance that’s bound to be discounted in favor of the leads) transforms Scarlett into an obnoxious shrew. How poignant that one week after Shelly Winters’ death, A Place in the Sun is essentially reworked with starlet Scarlett assuming her role

François Truffaut once remarked, “British cinema is an oxymoron,” and with the exception of writing/directing duo Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger, I couldn’t agree more. (Hitchcock directed the lion’s share of his masterpieces on American soil.) With the exception of several Alec Guinness/Ealing Studios “little comedies,” “British humor” strikes me as even more contradictory. Benny Hill? Dame Edna? Mr. Bean? The stuff that follows “The Lawrence Welk Show” every Saturday night on KPBS? Leave it to jolly old England to run Woody through the de-humorizer and house his only film void of even so much as a chuckle.

In spite of my lifelong quandary with Woody the artist, suffice it to say that deep down I worship the guy and have since I was a kid. At 14, a sickbed viewing of What’s Up Tiger Lily? induced so much laughter that I swear it knocked the flu right out of me. The following month saw a revival of Take the Money and Run, and ever since, I have seen all of his films on or before opening day. After the Soon-Yi fiasco, Allen desperately attempted a return to his “early, funny films.” It was as if he were crying out: “I’m not the monster Mia paints. See, I can still make you laugh.” He isn’t, and he didn’t.

Match Point is head and shoulders above anything he’s done since Husbands and Wives. It is far from a return to form; the only film in his canon that bears even a faint structural resemblance is Crimes and Misdemeanors. Nor would I call it a start in a new direction. Woody never was much for risk-taking. After people accepted his serious side, the closest he came to taking a chance was changing his trademark horn-rims in A Midsummer Night’s Sex Comedy and Broadway Danny Rose. Call it what it is – after a decade of below-average work, Woody finally rewarded the faithful with something to remind us of how grand an entertainer he can be.