Funny, He Looks Jewish

By RICHARD CORLISS

TITLE: MR. SATURDAY NIGHT

DIRECTOR: BILLY CRYSTAL

WRITERS: BILLY CRYSTAL, LOWELL GANZ AND BABALOO MANDEL

THE BOTTOM LINE: This intimate epic about a nightclub comic works too hard for pathos but is great for laughs.

American pop culture speaks in two accents: black and Jewish. Why is it that these traditionally maligned groups are among the country's most loved and admired entertainers? Onstage or on the air, the negative qualities that bigots see in these minorities are transformed. Dumb brutality gets alchemized into the grace and strength of black singers and athletes. Rude connivance becomes the capering wit of Jewish comics and writers and composers, their amazing gift for parody and synthesis. Folks who would never care to be near "those people" want to watch them, learn how to walk or talk from them -- be them, at least for that spotlight moment. Maybe it is America's awe at the drive of these performers to be good and be loved that makes show biz one part of the multicultural experiment that really works.

It never quite works for Buddy Young Jr. (Billy Crystal) in the prodigiously funny biopic Mr. Saturday Night. A Jewish kid with a talent to amuse, Buddy lusts for those irreconcilable opposites: to be loved and to be himself. To be all-American and 100% kosher. Buddy begins by facing a Catskills audience so primed for Yiddish comedy that when he says, "Good evening, ladies and gentlemen," a guy in the front row keens, "Oy! English!" He ends in Florida, nearly a half-century later, doing the same routines for an invalid army of the Jewish sun set. In between he tries -- so hard he tries -- to break through to general acceptance, to earn, as his wife says, "that extra little hug that he can only get from strangers."

As popular host of the Oscarcast, Billy Crystal gets hugged by a billion people every March. He is a star, baptized in the mainstream -- partly because of his quickness of wit, partly because he's so darned cute. The particulars of Mr. Saturday Night's plot pay tribute to Crystal's landsleit: to Jerry Lewis (who began, as Buddy does, by lip-synching to Danny Kaye records), to Red Buttons (who had a '50s TV show), to Jackie Mason (who offended Ed Sullivan). To all the Jerrys and Jackies and Buddys.

Crystal never forgets that a valentine is a picture of an open heart. As director and co-writer, he is careful to make Buddy a not-lovable guy, one who uses his wife (Julie Warner), his daughter (Mary Mara) and especially his way- too-long-suffering brother (David Paymer: excellent) as the butt of any gag.

So why does Crystal constantly want to redeem Buddy in the viewer's eyes? Why does the film go so moist just before the final punch line? Any Buddy could tell you: because kitsch is not just an anagram for shtick. In comedy the two are soul brothers -- the entertainer's way of saying "Love me, laugh with me, laugh at me, hate me, then forgive me and love me all over again."

Sentiment is easy; comedy is hard. What's special about this movie is that the funny parts are so funny, with gags coming too fast and too good to be assimilated on first hearing. At such moments, the main reaction is exhausted gratitude. It's as if you hired a painter to do your bathroom and he gave you the Sistine Chapel at no additional cost.