Misery Loves Comedy | DVD review - Do you have to be sad to be funny?

Misery Loves Comedy Tom Hanks.jpg
(Image credit: © Kaleidescope Entertainment)
(Image credit: © Kaleidescope Entertainment)

Do you have to be miserable to be funny? That's the question posed by actor-comedian turned director Kevin Pollak to over 60 famous funny people in the talking-heads documentary Misery Loves Comedy. The responses from the likes of Jimmy Fallon, Tom Hanks, Amy Schumer, Judd Apatow, Lisa Kudrow and Matthew Perry, as well as Brits Steve Coogan, Stephen Merchant and Rob Brydon, are tolerably amusing and engaging, but rarely particularly rib tickling or revealing for all but hard-core comedy fans and aspiring stand-up comics.

Certificate 15. Runtime 94 mins. Director Kevin Pollak.

Misery Loves Comedy is available on DVD from Monday 2 November from Spectrum.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3v2ewpePpO0

Jason Best

A film critic for over 25 years, Jason admits the job can occasionally be glamorous – sitting on a film festival jury in Portugal; hanging out with Baz Luhrmann at the Chateau Marmont; chatting with Sigourney Weaver about The Archers – but he mostly spends his time in darkened rooms watching films. He’s also written theatre and opera reviews, two guide books on Rome, and competed in a race for Yachting World, whose great wheeze it was to send a seasick film critic to write about his time on the ocean waves. But Jason is happiest on dry land with a classic screwball comedy or Hitchcock thriller.