the question of two brains

For 6.99 this morning I bought a copy of Steve Martin's The Man with Two Brains. What a strange little comedy this is. I'm a big fan of Steve Martin especially his films before he started making inoffensive family goo. Roxanne is a classic, All of Me fantastic and LA Story is a delightful romantic comedy as well. The Man with Two Brains owes a little to Frankenstein and a lot to the question of the mind-body split. When you know that Martin studied philosophy you can perhaps see the appeal of this screenplay to him. However, it hasn't aged that well. It took well over half the film before we even got to the question of the two brains, and then suddenly in the last 20 minutes the narrative took off. The setting up of the relationship between Martin and Kathleen Turner's evil femme fatale was laboured and not very interesting. The problem was that the comedy was incidental to the story - the jokes were add-ins, rather than narrative or character generated. It was all a bit skit-like (perhaps still owing too much to Saturday Night Live). However, it still far preferable to anything from Adam Sandler, Rob Schneider or the current crop of what stands in for so much film comedy today.

I also picked up Les miserables (with Liam Neeson - no singing) and a discounted three pack from the Coen brothers - The Big Lebowski, Intolerable Cruelty (there's always one dud in these packs) and O Brother Where Art Thou (what a fabulous soundtrack!).