Real Life

This is, of course, a very funny film (it's Albert Brooks, after all). But it also shows the quantum uncertainty in "reality" television. By attempting to observe the experiment, the experiment is altered.

Albert Brooks and his film crew follow the hapless family in "Real Life", dressed in bizarre helmet-cams. Charles Grodin, his wife and children can't help but be constantly aware that cameras are present, and this leads to all sorts of atypical behaviour.

I mention CBS' reality shows in my summary because I remember seeing one of the Survivor contestants on "Politically Incorrect" claim that after a short while they forgot the cameras were on the island with them. What she couldn't grasp -- but Albert Brooks does -- was that while the cameras weren't foremost in their minds all the time, you can't help but be influenced by the peripheral knowledge that a big Betacam camera and mike boom are just a few feet from your so-called "reality".

Local 'madness' in an Arizona small, one horse town. Based on a show shot in Santa Barbara California in 73' a first reality show, that went horribly wrong! It was a hit, but the family was never the same. This is an off the cuff answer to that first reality show, that I believe may have gone lost in translation.

Sure this starts out interesting and goes right along, showing a small Arizona Phoenix as the place where the real family will be followed by a camera and crew, in the home, in their lives and all over the place. It seems at times so depressing and so real in parts... that it hurts just watching. That's not bad when it seems that it is real. Brooks has a creative and wild mind. With it all some how he can lose people in his presentation. It isn't that he is not talented, he just sees things through a different ' lens ' than most average do.

If more people had been informed of why and how the movie came about, I think it would have done better at the theater. Albert Brooks is an entertaining creative craftsman and his work and acting shows to those who can follow what he is about.

I recommend this movie for it's madness and reality type-lore but the fun part is seeing the Arizona from the seventies and how different it is today. Brooks will always be good at his job I believe, but you have to understand the mind from which it comes. (***)

Any Albert Brooks fan who has not seen his first glorious feature is truly missing out. As anyone can attest, Brooks has the rare gift of turning ordinary human moments into riotously funny scenes, and this film is full of such moments, plus much more subversive material, like the way Grodin's character repeatedly comes perilously close to committing a felony against his family.

Perhaps the greatest joke of all is that while the character "Albert Brooks" continuously states how he is documenting real life, we all know that this is really a star vehicle for him. He is more concerned with how much everything costs, like the head-held cameras (for those who haven't seen it, imagine the result of torrid affair between Dave Bowman and the Hal-9000). This film, more that anything, is a satirical take on how Hollywood subverts what is really "real life," all this coming from a director with as great a grasp on how humans relate to one another than anyone.

There's no question that Albert Brooks is not for everybody - his particular blend of neuroticism and egomania can be way too much for most people. But if you can get on his wavelength, and when he's at his best - oh man! There's absolutely no one better. Real Life is Brooks' best movie, and deserves to be more widely known than it is. His portrayal of a controlling producer, who is willing to violate not only broadcast ethics but the standards of decency and good sense as well in order to inject life into his failing "documentary" is frightening, off-putting and truly hilarious all at once.

When I first saw this movie, I didn't realize it was based on an actual television experiment. I bring this up only because when I first saw the film, I felt its only flaw was that it didn't spend enough time showing the family and their disintegration in front of the cameras, choosing instead to focus almost exclusively on Brooks and his manic responses to the dilemma this posed. However, knowing that the real life experiment would have already been familiar to people, Brooks clearly wanted to use this movie to examine not the family but the bankrupt commercial mindset which would put such a project into play in the first place. As such, his satire is dead on and nobody could more perfectly embody the entertainment industry than Brooks himself. Just to see him smarmily singing and glad-handing at the beginning is worth the cost.

'Real life' is the perfect send-up of the worst scenario possible for a film maker shooting a documentary, i.e., what happens when your subject matter loses interest in the project before completion? Albert Brooks, as the seemingly besieged director of this 'loaf of reality' year long vigil with a typical American family, walks a fine line between egomania and neuroticism and scores with broad belly laughs both ways. Charles Grodin as the head of the suburban clan from which this film within a film emanates exudes his special brand of bland exuberance at the beginning of this captive camera stakeout inside his home(and everywhere else he may go) provided his life is depicted as letter perfect from day to day. When such is not the case and the obtrusive lenses are interfering with his job as a veterinarian, (in a sequence that has to be seen rather than described) then Grodin regards the camera presence as nothing more than an albatross and mentally switches himself off. Albert Brooks, meanwhile, never says quit. Every so-called hair in the eye of the lense is still a perfect scene regardless of the participation or lack of it, thereof, from his celluloid family. For Brooks regards this film as 'paramount'(oops) over the desires of his cast of characters. Brooks facile mind works methodically from beginning to end. From his perspective, nothing can go wrong, everything is in its place with a place for everything. So when his documentary and the human equation around it blow up in his face , his conferences with colleagues are hilarious as he tries various remedies to salvage not only his project but his self-image. Brooks is a comic delight as a man who cannot take criticism regarding his methods and his interaction with project staff are decidedly one-sided, but in the capable hands of this farceur, his myopic viewpoint is always good for guffaws galore. Real life should be this funny.