Daring Devils

VERY SEMI-SERIOUS (B) - I love New Yorker cartoons, and I love movies. Well, here you go: an automatic grade of B.

This serviceable documentary (streaming on HBO) has one big thing going for it -- the archive of New Yorker cartoons. If that's not your cup of tea, there's not much else to tune in for.

Newcomer Lea Wolchok follows around the New Yorker's cartoon editor, Robert Mankoff, and gives us an inside look at the editorial process (a yes/no session with editor-in-chief David Remnick is a highlight), while introducing us to some of faces behind the comic inventions. Side stories about Mankoff's personal and family life are a distraction, and a little of him goes a long way, but thankfully we are treated to vignettes of the humorists in his stable.

We meet the adorable and incorrigible Roz Chast, who was the pioneering young woman in the 1970s and who is a superstar to this day. Other veterans include the genius Bruce Eric Kaplan, the venerable oddball George Booth, and deadpan Sam Gross.

If you peruse the New Cartoons regularly, you'll know that in the past five years Mankoff has succeeded in bringing youth and diversity to the pages. Here, Farley Katz, Zach Kanin, Emily Flake and others provide a low-key, offbeat sensibility that's apparent in their drawings. Two newcomers are revelations: Lianna Fincke and Edward Steed. Wolchok captures Fincke's first session with Mankoff (he welcomes all comers to his office on Tuesdays), and Fincke is a shy, borderline autistic gamine with a skewed view of the world. The British-born Steed, also soft-spoken to the point of whispering, is a genius, with crude drawings that are as messy as his mind seems to be.

Many other talented people pass through, and Wolchok pays tribute to the greats that have graced the pages. (But no Danny Shanahan, alas.) Whether the cartoons themselves are your cup of tea is an important factor in deciding whether to sit through this. With just enough quirky characters -- in real life and on the pages -- "Very Semi-Serious" does justice to the history of an important part of comic history.

FOOTNOTE: For the record, the funniest New Yorker cartoon ever was this one drawn by the late, great Leo Cullum.

BEING EVEL (B+) - The '70s were somewhat of an Evel Knievel decade. He was a hustler and a huckster, a crazed daredevil willing to break every bone in his body in order to be rich and loved.

This rather fawning documentary, produced by one of Knievel's descendants, Johnny Knoxville of "Jackass" fame, plays like a classic episode of VH-1's "Behind the Music" from the 1990s. There's the backstory, the breakthrough moment, the rise to fame, the drug and/or alcohol addiction, prison time, redemption, and finally sainthood. While it's technically ordinary, it's a true hoot and a half to watch.

The pride of Butte, Montana, Evel Knievel was a motorcycle fanatic in Southern California in the 1960s who discovered the thrills of jumping over things with his Harley Davidson. He was a sneaky self-promoter who made headlines with one of his first big jumps -- an epic wipeout trying to sail over the fountains at Caesars Palace in Las Vegas (which is shown here several times in painfully slow slo-mo).

Knievel talked his way onto ABC's "Wide World of Sports," a Sunday afternoon potpourri on the third network, which couldn't afford baseball, football or hockey. There, he became a staple and ratings gold, a favorite of host Frank Gifford. Desperate to top himself, he eventually concocted a scheme in 1974 to launch himself in a steam-powered rocket in an attempt to span the Snake River Canyon in Idaho. The incredibly hyped event ended in anti-climactic fashion. Shortly thereafter, his career plummeted, the bubble had burst, and he became just another rich asshole.

Ah, but that's not the nadir. No, that came when he took a baseball bat (an aluminum one, it's reported) to his longtime promoter, Shelly Saltman (who had penned a fairly tepid tell-all), and did a few months of hard time. That stunt killed his lucrative line of action figures and stripped him of many of his assets.

This documentary comes from Daniel Junge, who has an interesting resume. It looks like he finds compelling subjects, teams with a collaborator, and cranks out a documentary. Subjects have included Legos, Pakistanis attacked with acid, the confluence of Christianity and mixed martial arts, and "Iron Ladies of Liberia."

Here he assembled childhood friends, members of the entourage, journalists (including Gifford and Geraldo Rivera), actor George Hamilton, and Knievel's childhood sweetheart and first wife, Linda Bork, whom he had essentially kidnapped and married and whose rather dimwitted remarks provide comic relief. Knoxville is over-enthusiastic, as if the filmmakers goosed him in order to move the product. He and others, including skateboarder Tony Hawk, pay tribute to the man who opened the door to the extreme-sports movement, a true legacy.

As uneven as the production can be, and despite running about 10 minutes too long, this is highly entertaining storytelling, a fun look at one of the more exotic celebrities of the eventful '60s and '70s.

BONUS TRACK
The opening credits of "Being Evel" splash on the screen to the joyous strains of T-Rex's "20th Century Boy." What a riff: