Humor Me

In intercutting his narrative with black and white enactments of grim jokes, writer/director Sam Hoffman pulls an interesting feature film out of the material of his first work, the online TV series Old Jews Telling Jokes.  

The film centres on familiar family tensions — sibling rivalry, dealing with widowhood, growing old, the abyss between father and son, the smothering between mother and daughter. 

But it’s arguably most distinctive for its reflection on how comedy enables us to deal with life’s harshness, if at the risk of intimacy. As any tale-telling wag may realize, jokes can either connect us to or isolate ourselves from, other people. Indeed humour can also be a weapon, so "Humour me" can include "Hit me with some humour." The jokes run aptly black and blue.

Bob Kroll’s penchant for funny stories connects him to his buddies. They sit around swapping one-liners. 

Now, the film makes no explicit reference to anything Jewish here. But it’s still old Jews telling jokes. It’s Jewish humour typically providing an enabling spirit in the face of tragedy. 

Bob’s gag reflex has protected him from openly grieving his wife’s death, but at the cost of burying his emotions. He stashed her belongings in a a storage closet and his emotions behind his barrage of Zimmerman jokes. 

That comic reflex also prevented his emotional closeness to son Nate. Brother Randy has succeeded in life by glibly adapting (i.e., plagiarizing) his father’s real estate slogan. Nate is too serious and sensitive for that easy success. As the attack of digestion jokes encapsulates, Nate is blocked.

Hoffman plays out the stories as film events, life scenes separated only by colour from the narrative “life” action. He’s showing not just telling. That strategy gives comic storytelling the same heft and value as real life. Bob’s stories are as central to the film’s concerns as the plot is. The film is centrally about their interrelationship. 

So Nate’s growth is from disdaining his father’s comedic compulsion to making it work for him. He rescues the seniors' doomed Mikado production by interlacing the three girls’ song with bawdy jokes. There's even comic relief in the old woman's "having a stroke." Once he realizes his father’s emotional life continued behind the protective shell of jokes, Bob unblocks himself and rediscovers his creativity. 

Bob’s first play, the big and promising success, was based on his mother’s death. The new blocked play is a drama about how to react to the tragedy of the Pompeian corpses found frozen dead after a volcanic eruption. 

Great metaphor. The lava has frozen the humanity in dead postures, life arrested in a still where motion used to be. Bob has trouble scripting his characters’ reaction to that. He himself is frozen, blocked, buried, because he doesn’t know how to confront such a tragedy. Then he realizes his father’s way. Jokes. Only the energy of the comic burst frees him. 

It works. By converting the Gilbert and Sullivan to contemporary joking, Nate recovers his confidence, energy and spirit. He returns to finish his Pompey play. He has a new comfort with his father. He can stay independent of his dumped ex-wife and warmly introduce his young son to his new girlfriend. 

Life goes on. If you can find the right gags to lubricate it. And don't stop me if you've heard this one.