All of Me (1984)

Watched 3/27/24 (Prime Video)

All of Me, a 1984 high-concept screwball comedy starring a peaking Steve Martin, is a real head scratcher. On the one hand, it’s the kind of high-concept premise that’s built for sustained sequences of physical comedy for one of our great laugh-givers, paired with a co-star putting in equal effort. On the other, it struggles so much to maintain momentum that one is often left to forget how good that premise seemed on paper.

Director Carl Reiner and co. seem to have made a movie with so much talent and potential assembled that execution slipped right through their fingers. There is no memorable sequence or even scene in All of Me with the flair and daring of any of the movies it owes inspiration to. It lacks slapstick wit and too often plays with a leisurely, feeble energy that may have been intended as a good hang but leaves more of a bland taste in one’s mouth than anything. It never gets to the frantic, creatively-explosive pace that you want it to reach to tickle your funny bone.

One year earlier, director and star communed for The Man with Two Brains, another body-swap caper with much more of the potentially cocaine-fueled imagination and innovation that one would expect from the combination of premise and era. Dark comedy blending with goofy, oversized animation by the leads and eagle-eyed direction/editing is necessary to make these scripts land. And the script has to write beyond its premise, for starters. All of Me just seemed to be too comfortable in its lack of set pieces and absurdist insight, something even Steve Martin at his usual 110% effort couldn’t save for me. A showcase in mediocrity on a Wednesday night—hard to diagnose specific problems, easy to identify the overall lack of personality.

4/10