Punchline (1988)
Director:
David SeltzerWriter:
David SeltzerStars:
Sally Field, Tom Hanks, John Goodman
Sally Field goes the Roseanne route inPunchline. Field plays a housewife and mother who suddenly develops the urge to be a comedienne. Her comic instincts are on target, but her timing and delivery stinks. Tom Hanks, a stand-up comic with a few years' experience under his belt, offers to teachField the ropes. As they get to know each other, Hanks and Fieldbegin to pick up on each other's shortcomings; though Hanks has far more talent than Field, for example, he has a positively ruinous habit of expressing his deep-down dislike of everyone else in the world, and this frequently alienates his audience. Writer-directorDavid Seltzer times Punchline like a good joke; he continually sets up for the expected, then pulls a last-minute fast one, keeping the film lively and unpredictable throughout. The supporting cast, coincidentally including future Roseanne star John Goodman, is uniformly superb.
Here is the link to the movie at the Internet Movie database: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0095927/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1
