Sometimes you’re not really sure what kind of movie you have on your hands until an audience reacts to it, and that seems to be the case with the upcoming “The Comedian.”
“I saw the movie as a dark drama with some comedy,” director Taylor Hackford told EW, “but then we tested it with an audience, and they really laughed hard. So better to call it a dark comedy with drama.”
READ MORE: Robert De Niro’s Jokes Ain’t Funny In ‘The Comedian’ [Review]
Starring Robert De Niro and Leslie Mann, the story follows an aging comic, who is sentenced to community service and finds new life in a friendship with a young woman. Here’s the official synopsis:
An aging comic icon, Jackie, has seen better days. Despite his efforts to reinvent himself and his comic genius, the audience only wants to know him as the former television character he once played. Already a strain on his younger brother and his wife, Jackie is forced to serve out a sentence doing community service for accosting an audience member. While there, he meets Harmony (Leslie Mann), the daughter of a sleazy Florida real estate mogul, and the two find inspiration in one another, resulting in surprising consequences.
Co-starring Danny DeVito, Edie Falco, Veronica Ferres, Charles Grodin, Cloris Leachman, Patti LuPone, Lois Smith, and Harvey Keitel, “The Comedian” opens in limited release on December 2nd and goes wide on January 13, 2017.