As someone who’s on the peripheral edge of being a comedian, I’ve always sought-out films, TV shows, books, or anything that can give us a peek behind the The Order of the Clowns, an exclusive unisex fraternity that has been breached in films from the biopic “Lenny” to Seinfeld’s documentary “Comedian” to Marc Maron’s podcast (or TV show) to “Louie” to Patton Oswalt’s books and now we have perhaps the best comedy about comedians in Mike Birbiglia’s “Don’t Think Twice.”
It’s about a struggling NYC improv group that is facing their longtime theater’s closing, and trying to break-out any way they can before the curtain closes. A life raft is (perhaps) thrown when casting agents for “Weekend Live” (the movie’s version of SNL) are interested in only a couple of the six performers. The rest of the group has to face the very real possibility that they might not “make it,” while trying to get Keegan Michael Key’s rising star to take them along too.
What Works: For Birbiglia’s longtime fans—watching his off-Broadway show “My Girlfriend’s Boyfriend” is still a vivid memory five years later—this is a new evolution in his filmwork, and it’s been said that the movie doesn’t really feel like a movie at all, but a well-lit documentary. The feeling that we’re spying on professional comedians as they go through self-doubt, jealousy, anxiety, the rage of joke-theft, and (occasionally) the triumph of scoring big laughs makes the movie’s pleasures almost voyeuristic, and you’ll get about as close as you can come to the rejection heavy business of media performers without actually having to go through an audition.
The cast is uniformly excellent, but the stand-outs are Birbiglia as the competitive leader of the group (just watch his face as Key announces he’s made it to “Weekend Live”), Gillian Jacobs as the underachieving female “star” of the group who seems scared of making a real career out of comedy and just wants to keep that college-dorm feeling going forever, and Key as a guy struggling to make it when everyone already thinks he has made it. [The scenes set inside “Weekend Live” showcase the brutal competition of the big leagues that his improv group has always kept on low-boil.] As an actor, Birbiglia lets rage and envy seep through his mild-manneredness, and two separate restaurant scenes where he confronts Key (the pressures trying to stay on “Weekend Live” are no less than the ones trying to get on it) are thrillingly realistic.
What Doesn’t: No movie is perfect, but this one comes so close, there’s no sense nitpicking.
What I Would Have Done Differently: Go see this movie, and try to figure out how many aspiring comedians are in the audience with you.