Dustin Hoffman's diligent mimicry creates a superficially believable, but otherwise unlikely Lenny Bruce -- innocent, uncalculating, imperceptive. And, odd for a former dancer-choreographer, Bob Fosse, the director, robs his actors of movement and body. Instead, in arty Bergmanesque black-and-white, he headlocks them in tight closeups that bluntly underscore the crassness of everybody but luckless Lenny, and he creates movement only with occasional flurries of cut-cut-cut montage. In freely jumping about in time, from nightclub routines to private life, Fosse fractures the perfected Lady Sings the Blues fame-and-heartbreak formula, in order to make some feeble Freudian links between Lenny's raging words and his agonizing experiences. With Valerie Perrine. (1974) — Duncan Shepherd
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