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MOVIE MADNESS (THE COMEBACK TRAIL)

So here's a Robert de Niro comedy that almost works.

The New Yorker, who was once regarded as the "world's greatest movie actor," continues his quest to find a light-hearted comedy script as good as 'Midnight Run'.

And while 'The Comeback Trail' comes up considerably short, it's still better than most of the dross he has subjected us to repeatedly over the past 25 years.

That's a very low bar, I know but such are the expectations of a Robert de Niro comedy vehicle.

A 'Get Shorty' style caper, de Niro plays a much maligned, extremely dodgy exploitation movie producer in George Gallo's 'The Comeback Trail'.

Set in the 1970s, Max Barber's latest flick featuring gun toting, buxsome nuns has flopped at the box office and he is in serious debt to Morgan Freeman's gangster Reggie Fontaine.

Max is the kind of guy who likes to duck and weave, so to avoid retribution he comes up with a scam to get a movie into production that will result in the death of its lead actor.

This, he hopes, will result in a massive insurance payday for Reggie and wipe out his debts.

Keeping his nephew Zach Braff's Walter Creason in the dark, he manages to get a Western into production called 'The Oldest Gun in the West' starring Tommy Lee Jones' former cowboy movie icon Duke Montana.

Duke has been put out to pasture since the Western genre's heyday but Walter and Max manage to track him down in a nursing home.

What follows is a more sweary version of a 'Roadrunner' cartoon, with Max trying to devise sequences featuring stunts that are so reckless they seem guaranteed to result in Duke's big movie comeback?

On paper, Gallo and Josh Posner's screenplay looks like it could be full of memorable, knowing one liners about the film industry and great slapstick set pieces.

However 'The Comeback Trail' never really rises beyond the mildly amusing, failing to secure a single raucous belly laugh.

With its 1970s period setting and its experienced, accomplished cast, the film should be a home run.

But it ambles along at a leisurely pace, never hitting great heights but just hoping to find its way home.

With his aviator specs, cap, curly locks and his creaky Cadillac, de Niro does a better job than usual as a producer on the make - although he still struggles to rein in that tendency of his to overact in comedies.

Braff is slightly better comic value as his naive nephew - although the 'Scrubs' star is reduced to looking confused an awful lot.

Jones is arguably the best thing in the film as the enigmatic, weather beaten movie star who on the surface seems grateful just to get one more shot at movie stardom.

Freeman, unfortunately, gives a pretty stale, by the book rendition of a Hollywood caper movie villain, as does Hirsch as Max's nemesis, the more successful producer James Moore who wants him to part with a much coveted unmade script he has been sitting on.

Kate Katzman delivers a decent enough performance as Megan Albert, an inexperienced director that Max suckers into his scam.

All the ingredients are there for an acerbic Hollywood satire.

However Gallo's movie suffers when measured against other movie industry satires.

'The Comeback Trail' does not amuse or pack a satirical punch like 'Sunset Boulevard' or 'The Player'.

The film's similarity to Barry Sonenfeld's 'Get Shorty' is a major drawback and the failure of the writers to come anywhere near Elmore Leonard's zippy dialogue means it is just a limp imitation.

An amiable, if slightly wheezy affair, de Niro's hunt for a classic comedy rumbles on.

God loves a trier or so they say.

But when it comes to de Niro and comedy, I'm beginning to wonder if that is really the case.

('The Comeback Trail' premiered at the Monte Carlo Comedy Film Festival on October 9, 2020 and was made available on the Sky and Now TV streaming platforms in the UK and Ireland on June 19, 2021)

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