Apparently, Peter Chelsom's Funny Bones is meant to be a comedy. I only found this out two minutes ago when I brought up its details on the IMDB and saw the poster for it, complete with the tagline A zany look at two comedians who'll do anything for a laugh. This wasn't what I signed on for when I decided to watch it yesterday, and for the most part, it wasn't what I got. It's a film about comedians, after all, and why comedy itself might be funny, once you look a little closer, comedians often aren't.
Tommy Fawkes (Oliver Platt) isn't funny no matter how you look at him - at least, that's what we're told. We only see a couple of snippets of his routine as he bombs on his first big Vegas night, and while I really enjoyed the dark desperation of it, the audience are less impressed and it's up to his legendary father George (Jerry Lewis) to save the day. Consumed by self-disgust, Tommy flees the city and the country, flying back to the English seaside resort of Blackpool where he spent the first six halcyon years of his life. Here, he hopes to find material he can buy so that he can finally make it big. Instead, however, he encounters the transcendently funny Jack Parker (Lee Evans). Parker and his family are something of an enigma, and in trying to find out what makes them tick, Tommy lands up getting a lot more than he bargained for.
I liked this one, really I did. Sure, it's tonally consistent - maybe Chelsom really was trying to make a comedy rather than a dark drama about clowns - but there's a certain gloom and lyricism about it that really appealed. Maybe it's Blackpool, a town I love with all my heart but also one which might just possibly be the saddest place on earth, using sleaze and sequins to cover some of the highest levels of deprivation in the country. Once, Blackpool could attract the likes of Sinatra; these days, it's a living graveyard for the sort of variety acts that have no place in modern society. It's a fitting setting for a film that dips the tip of a toe into surrealism, with one really cute chase sequence set in the workings of the fairground ghost train.
Performances vary from good to great, with Platt and Lewis solid but Evans and Leslie Caron (as his mother, Katie) positively luminous. I've never been a huge fan of Lee Evans' standup, but here he displays a complexity and sincerity that put a lot of more experienced actors to shame. The cinematography is beautifully queasy, too, with characters often filmed on the slant to emphasise their fundamental oddness.
With all that said? It's still a mess, unfortunately. There's a few too many plot threads with only nominal relevance to the central story, and even the subplot that opens the movie could, I think, have been lost to create a tidier, more elegant piece. My other gripe would be a thematic one, with the film's insistence that clowning is the funniest form of comedy. While I really do admire clever physical comedy, it's not something that makes me laugh out loud, and it all just felt a little too close to anti-intellectualism for my personal taste.
In the end, though, I had a thoroughly good time with this dark little drama, which was a definite step away from the cutesy fluff that passes for British dramedy these days. If you like a little old-fashioned weird, then give this one a shot - I think you'll find it a thoroughly rewarding couple of hours.
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