Nickel Tour: The Lonely Guy (1984)

Here's the nickel tour:

Steve Martin (you know him, you love him!) plays the titular character, a "lonely guy" in New York in the mid-eighties. Amazingly, Charles Grodin is funnier as the supporting lonely guy. One commenter on the IMDB observes that Martin suffers for playing the straight man in a comedy, and I agree. I didn't laugh as much as I wanted to, and most of my grins and chuckles shared time with blank stares, counting the seconds to a knowing payoff, and eye rolling at this dated film adaptation of a surely even more dated book. Some of the sight gags worked well, despite being cliched- Martin opening curtains in a potential apartment to reveal an underwater vista with live fish, but wait for it, a tire floats by. A lot of the film comes off this way- not a one-two punch of comedy, but rather more a feeling of desperation in making sure the audience gets the joke. I give it a "They should've called it The Lonely Film."