In his capacity as a beloved comedian and well-regarded actor in both lighter and more serious fare, Albert Brooks is quite an enduring presence that may represent a particular time in the culture, but still remains quite a significant figure. However, it seems as if his time as a film director has been essentially forgotten outside of those earnest devotees who remember what a creative filmmaker he was at his peak. Even when discussed, it’s normally films like Lost in America or Mother that tend to gravitate towards the top, and while they’re certainly terrific films, his directorial debut is perhaps his most fascinating work. As the title suggests, Real Life is a film about reality in its many forms, with Brooks delving deep into the boundaries between fiction and what is authentic, in what is one of the first truly revolutionary entries into the burgeoning mockumentary genre, which Brooks directly assisted in not only creating, but also consolidating as a legitimate form of both comedy and artistic expression. Full disclosure is always necessary, and the fact remains that Real Life is a work that has divided audiences, with some perceiving it as a genius work, while others finding it self-indulgent and half-baked, which are both opinions that aren’t only relevant, but entirely truthful. It’s not unheard of to watch this film and find oneself entirely polarized – and even the most dedicated comedy fan might be slightly disappointed by the disparity between the premise we’re introduced to, and what we receive at the end. However, all complaints aside for now, Real Life is an incredibly funny film at times that doesn’t seem to realize quite how influential it is – and even with some glaring problems, this is a film worth seeing, if only to see how Brooks managed to create something that dared to not only be funny, but truly insightful towards the life it sought to reflect in its own way.

In the film, Brooks is playing himself (a fascinating choice, but one that works well when we realize that, despite playing a wide range of characters throughout his career, none of the actor’s characters are funnier than his real-life persona, which is a blend of an over-the-top clown with a taste for absurdity and neurotic, mid-century intellectual), who sets out to complete an outrageously ambitious project – for one year, he and his crew will spend every day with the Yeager family, an ordinary suburban clan who put themselves forward to be part of what is apparently going to be an essential social experiment. From morning to evening, the family’s life will be subjected to the lens of Brooks’ camera, each of their movements being recorded for posterity, hopefully into forming an honest depiction of the regular nuclear American family. However, this audacious project turns out to be more challenging than any of them expected – for the family, they find themselves pressured by the realization that their entire waking lives are now the folly of studio executives who could use it for whatever intentions they have, while Brooks himself sees his ideas failing regularly, falling apart frequently as he realizes that his ambitions far outweigh his skills when it comes to putting them on screen. The tensions only begin to rise, especially as Brooks and his crew find their way into the lives of these characters – what started as an attempt to be a neutral observer becomes something far more troubling and disconcerting, which only causes the plans to fall apart. Naturally, hilarity ensues – but not before a few well-selected existential crises find their way through this family and their frantic existence inspired by the vain attempt to become famous.

As someone who is an adherent to the school of comedy, I’ve always been bewildered that Real Life is relatively obscure, since everything about it seems like it should be more well-regarded. However, getting through the film reveals exactly why it is more of a failure than a success, since it is the rare kind of film that fails until its own ambitions, being far too promising to actually maintain its brilliance for the entire duration. The first act of the film is about as close to a comic masterpiece as one can get, since there is something for everyone – old-fashioned entertainment (on behalf of Brooks, who is doing some fantastic work and giving a performance perhaps better than the film deserved), some bold overtures of satire, and even a few moments of unhinged absurdity that will find the viewer keeping an eye open for the small details that make it such a varied, fascinating work of comedy. If the viewer was to stop watching the film halfway through, they’d likely think it was one of the best comedies of its era. The problem comes in the back-half, where it seems to go off the rails, since not only does it struggle to remain consistent in its tone, but also tends to become quite repetitive, with the repetition of certain ideas become incredibly tedious, and indicating that this idea ran out of steam long before it reached a logical conclusion. It’s not quite enough to ruin the film, since there are still some genuinely funny moments peppered liberally throughout – it’s that Brooks seems to be so intent on taking some bold strides, after a while the smaller details become lost in the shuffle, which is a shame considering how promising some of the ideas being explored here actually were, and how only a small amount of work could’ve gone into making this a much stronger film.

Brooks is a comic genius when it comes to capturing the intricacies of everyday life, which is the precise area in which Real Life thrives, since it hits the highest peaks when it is purely commenting on the banalities of the lives of the main characters. The problem comes in the fact that this idea is abandoned relatively fast when Brooks himself becomes too present in the narrative – a good precedent of this being workable came a few years later when Rob Reiner played one of the main characters in This Is Spinal Tap, which positioned him at the centre, but never had him detract from the main narrative, using him as an audience surrogate into the world he was presenting. Despite being a very gifted actor, Brooks just doesn’t work well in the context of what the film is expecting him to do – eventually it becomes less about the family, and more about the self-indulgence of the fictional director that Brooks plays. This is a method that could’ve worked in the right hands, but falls apart when we realize that there isn’t much behind it that the audience can grasp onto. Real Life is a formative mockumentary, but seems to struggle to maintain it, losing the format relatively fast – and a brief disclaimer at the start that the film will be about both the family and the crew doesn’t excuse it from abandoning the plot and becoming a very conventional comedy with touches of unnecessary absurdism towards the end. This may have been entirely intentional – Brooks is known for his acerbic sense of humour and commitment to venturing out of the collective comfort zone – but it just doesn’t help when the film surrounding his bold ideas just becomes more tedious than it is inspiring.

High-concept comedy is, by definition, a very challenging task, and it takes quite a bit of effort to even briefly flirt with greatness. Real Life is an incredibly ambitious project, but one that had a lot of potential. It doesn’t squander it entirely, but instead seems to present us with a very promising first half, introducing an incredibly funny premise that it simply fails to maintain, filling in the dead-air with repetitive jokes that are supposed to distract from the fact that Real Life is essentially something that would’ve been much better as a short film on Saturday Night Live (or, as it’s referred to in this film, Good Night Saturday), on which Brooks and his productions were a mainstay in the late 1970s, than a feature-length film, since there is simply not enough stamina to maintain what is actually a very complex story that required careful attention. It’s not a travesty of a film, but rather one that takes its time establishing a clear direction, and eventually falters when it becomes clear that it just can’t keep up with its own pace, choosing to instead regress and depend on the aspects that supposedly made it funny in the first place, which simply doesn’t work nearly as well as Brooks and his cohorts seem to believe. There are some genius moments – and when it hits the right notes, Real Life is astoundingly funny – but these become few-and-far-between after a while, replaced instead with a meandering and often insignificant approach to humour that seems beneath its gifted writer-director-star. Ultimately, Real Life is entertaining but minor, and is instead better viewed as the start of a promising directorial career of a director who may not get a lot of attention for his work behind the camera today, but has still proven to be exceptionally gifted when inspiration strikes – if only it had been more regular with this film.