Plot so thin, it passes unnoticed.

One of the best films i have seen

Excellent, Without a doubt!!

Amazing worth wacthing. So good. Biased but well made with many good points.

Right off the bat, I'll admit that maybe I would have liked this had I been in a different mood when I watched it. It seems to me that this happens often. A movie might look good on one viewing and not so good at another time.Basically, the comedy just didn't hit me and the serious bits didn't seem real. The ending seemed condescending and just not satisfying.Even the "Singing In The Rain" sequence didn't hit me. I saw it as a well contrived bit of comedy,but it just didn't reach me.Bottom line is that in the case of this movie, don't really go by my review or by anyone's review be it good or bad. See it for yourself. You might like it. And you might not.And is my review helpful to you??? NOPE!!!

Spoilers herein.Filmmakers like to tinker with genres. That's the most direct and easy path to cleverness. One template is to make two genres into characters, then to embody them in people. When the people interact, you have a battle of film genres. When the people are alone, you have the genre in its normal form. Lynch took this to extremes with "Blue Velvet" of the year or two before. Although the craft is far less here, the ambition is equally advanced.On the one hand, we have a simple date movie: charming Sally (with her charming girls) has a marriage dilemma. There's some charming humor with making dinner. There's some minor threat to all this sweetness (the threat represented by the big, bad Church), even (gasp!!!) a bad hairdo. But loving husband comes through in the end. Sally is perfect for this, our prototype of absolute earnestness, moving through Lucille redheadedness.On the other hand we have a genre that has exploded in the past decade: the reflexive film where the performances are about performances, the skits are about skits, the character is schizoid because the position of the actor is also, simultaneously playing the performed and the performer. Here it is a standup comedian whose life and performance are confused. Sally is an archetype but she is also a performer so she finds herself sharing the stage, even contesting the stage with Hanks. Naturally she doesn't need to win, and her genre resolves as planned.Hanks does need to win. He lives in two layers: the madness of the performer and the madness of the performance: a commonly sought situation for intelligent actors. I call this folding. The whole film is constructed around one scene, the scene in the diner where Sally distances her genre from Hanks; genre and (because he is layered) his character. Watch him try the inside-outside acting shifts that Jack Nicholson invented. Watch him quote one of the most influential films in the folded films movement (for Hollywood), "Singing in the Rain." Watch him even try a few Brando mannerisms.Its a pretty brilliant idea. And it is pretty inspired and risky acting. Hanks has since become a joke, When he says he made only three good movies, I am certain he has this one in mind. Actually, his thread is bungled by the writer/director. There?s a bad decision in introducing his character with an anatomy test. And his material doesn't match his character: when comedy is a defense against life it is different than lots of what he does, excepting the "hate stylist" notion.But he really does try here, and it is an intelligent notion.Ted?s Evaluation -- 2 of 4: Has some interesting elements.

PUNCHLINE (1988) *** Sally Field, Tom Hanks, John Goodman, Mark Rydell, Paul Mazursky, Damon Wayans, Taylor Negron, Barry Sobel, Max Anderson, George Wallace. Uneven approach to the world of professional stand-up comedy with mixed results: namely Field as a Polish housewife comic wannabe and Hanks as a seasoned yet emotionally troubled comedian (deftly blending comedy and drama in this, one of his breakthrough performances, particularly his near breakdown on stage) facing stardom at a club showcase for talent and a possible road to stardom.

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 perform naturally and effectively on stage. Can true love be far behind? (Rhetorical question, but the answer is not pat.)If you are a Tom Hanks fan, see this movie. You will be delighted. He puts on a versatile performance depicting a guy who needed to be, in the very fiber of his being, a comedian. The role shows off his talent, and makes us understand why he is now, at the relatively young age of 45, one of America's premiere screen idols. The rest of the movie, however, is a mix of strengths and weaknesses. Sally Field, in a difficult role, gives an uneven performance which I think is partly the fault of director David Seltzer, who also wrote the script. His direction is brilliant and awful by turns. In particular the schmaltzy, unnecessarily unrealistic ending is very disappointing. He also dug himself a hole because the top comedic performance had to be the last, yet it wasn't. All the expectations of the audience fell, and perhaps that is why Seltzer stuck himself with an ending that played like something devised by a committee of filmland execs intent on political correctness above all else. Also, any difference between the John Goodman who played Rosanne Arnold's husband on TV and the John Goodman here was not immediately discernible.However some of the scenes were just perfect I especially liked it when Steven's overbearing father (instead of a network producer) shows up at the club. Steven Gold's anguished, self-revelatory on stage reaction is excellent. --Or when Lilah rushes to prepare dinner slapstick style for company; or when night is done and it's four or five am and Steven has helped her discover herself and he asks how she will explain being out all night to her husband and she says she will crawl into bed with one of the kids and he will think she slept there all night. Also good was the singing in the rain scene and the scene in which the daughter, showing the wisdom of children, says to Lilah, after her husband asks to see her perform, "Say yes, mom." Also good were the motley troupe of semi-pro comedians, including a fine performance by Mark Rydell as Romeo, the manager of the club.This rates a five point something at IMDb, but that's a little unfair. It's a better movie than that. See it for Tom Hanks, and for David Seltzer, who just missed making a great movie.(Note: Over 500 of my movie reviews are now available in my book "Cut to the Chaise Lounge or I Can't Believe I Swallowed the Remote!" Get it at Amazon!)