The main escape hatch of Steve Martin's stand-up routines is the schizoid way he switches from one persona to another, allowing him not just a sense of detachment from his own gags, but a sense of abandoning ship. His restriction here to a single personality, the adopted son of a black sharecropper, though scarcely consistent, and though bounced around a good deal by the shaggy-dog storyline, seems a bit like indentured servitude. What makes it the more wearisome is that as a comic actor he enrolls in the old Jackie Gleason-Lucille Ball school, which holds that any funny line (or unfunny line) is made funnier if spoken at a bellow. With Bernadette Peters; directed by Carl Reiner. (1979) — Duncan Shepherd
This movie is not currently in theaters.