Synopsis
An American comedy
A pushy, narcissistic filmmaker persuades a Phoenix family to let him and his crew film their everyday lives, in the manner of the ground-breaking PBS series "An American Family".
Real Life
1979 Directed by Albert Brooks
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Popular reviews
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Albert Brooks' first three films are the pinnacle of the last 35 years of American screen comedy. It all started here. More TK for The Dissolve's Movie Of The Week feature.
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If 1979 Albert Brooks could watch Netflix’s Selling Sunset, he’d be quite pleased with himself.
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"you started out with this artsy-craftsy reality crap and what did you end up with? the news, the goddamned NEWS!"
Man with a Movie Camera.
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so divine <3 ! the fetishization of the non-NYC/Californian is the funniest shit imaginable every time any time, and Brooks does such a wonderful job with it. Grodin is so silly - the doughiest eyes, the goopiest face. laughing out loud at the assertion of having taken someone to O'Hare for a date just for the hell of it. my last and worst and most annoying thought is: I wonder if Janet Malcolm has seen this movie and what she thinks of it!!!!!!
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We talk a lot about comedians giving egoless performances but goddamn...Albert Brooks REALLY commits to depicting himself as a gigantic piece of shit here.
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87/100
Reality seen as a template for the image; a farce captured through lumbering head cameras and disruptive crew members. Real Life is inherently fascinating because Albert Brooks is harshly narcissistic from his very first character introduction, (complete with a song and dance number) never truly collapsing into a pushy Hollywood blend of paranoia and creative inspiration because it's already his own personal reality. Nothing is real except Albert Brooks's perception of the concept, and it makes the conclusion - where the unreal meets the real, consequences become immediate and creativity is interpreted by the mind of the sick - all the more frightening and hilarious. Before he became your favorite mobster in Drive, Albert Brooks was predicting the future.
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The scene of Brooks reassuring Grodin that no one will hold him killing a horse against him and it won't affect his vet business as Grodin impotently, softly tries to make him see reason is about as bleak as American satire gets. If this suffers in relation to Brooks's next two or three movies it's only because this is such a lacerating film that even at its funniest it feels unbearable to face directly.
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Albert Brooks is literally the Einstein of American comedy. The other Albert Einstein gave us quantum mechanics and the Observer Effect, the theory that the mere observation of a phenomenon inevitably changes that phenomenon. Albert Brooks (née Einstein) applied the Observer Effect to show business and real life and discovered the formula: Reality + Observation = Fake
Real Life didn’t just predict the future, but manipulated time and created our present. Brooks showed us personal privacy as a fungible commodity. He understood that the audience craves fake, reality sucks. He knew that cups without balls doesn’t mean jack shit. It’s satire so caustic and reactive that its coagulant is the Kardashian world we are struggling to keep up with.
Real…
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"And I think if you ask any magician he'll tell you that cups without balls doesn't mean jack shit!"
This movie has no business being as good as it is–it's less of a comedy and more squarely part of the Non-Horror Horror genre. It's layer upon layer upon layer of satire; the depths to which this film goes for its gallows humor is so chillingly dark I wouldn't be surprised if most people mistook it for light. It's a commentary on the falsities of the nuclear family, the power of media, the greed of Hollywood, the moral grey areas of psychological studies, the naivety of Americans, intellectual hot air, the emptiness of celebrity, and toxic masculinity. Albert Brooks represents everything…
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There's a notable abundance of material which was appealing upon the mind of Albert Brooks in this directorial debut from the American actor, comedian, writer and director. While many of its characteristics chiefly spoof reality television, in particular PBS’s 1973’s An American Family, incorporate an inherent bleakness, he prepares his arguments humorously and entirely successfully.
In many ways, it functions as a mockumentary as a film crew sets out to record a year in the life of a regular American family, and the prevalence of the topics are brimming with a forward-looking commentary on socialisation as his quarry encompasses not just reality television but also documentary filmmaking. The movie tackles aspects which were ahead of their time and the…