Regards to Broadway

LOVE, GILDA (B) - This by-the-numbers, fawning biography of "Saturday Night Live" star Gilda Radner offers an unsatisfying mix that underplays the funny (her brilliant comic acting) and overplays the sad (death from ovarian cancer in her 40s). Maybe a running time of more than 88 minutes would have balanced things out. A fully formed artist never emerges from the sympathetic direction of newcomer Lisa Dapolito and an army of producers. (Too many cooks?)

Dapolito dwells on Radner's childhood as a fattie but then mostly glosses over adult eating disorders. Too few "SNL" clips are included and they are way too short here. The comedy has no room to breathe. A lot of time is spent on her rather uninteresting post-"SNL" career, and her relationship with Gene Wilder is told mostly through longtime pals and a nephew of Wilder's.

Radner's diaries are used to good effect, but that device sits in stark contrast to Judd Apatow's extensive examination of the psyche of Garry Shandling for HBO (which has the luxury of being three times as long); not that such over-indulgence would have necessarily worked here. Maybe there just aren't as many neuroses and noodlings to sift through when it comes to Radner. But you leave with the sense that you don't really know her all that better than you did before, and you didn't get to laugh as much as you wanted to.

THE SUNSHINE BOYS (1975) (A) - One of the great Neil Simon screenplays, this one starring Walther Matthau and George Burns as estranged vaudeville partners asked to reunite for a TV special. Richard Benjamin steals scenes as the nephew/agent of Willie Clark (Matthau), the frustratingly irascible dotard who harbors petty grudges against Al Lewis (Burns). In classic "Odd Couple" fashion, Willie lives in a messy hotel room in Manhattan while Burns idles away at his daughter's house in New Jersey. Zingers and malapropisms fly past at an impressive rate, and all three actors are at the top of their game. Besides the corny depiction of a bygone era -- filmed in Gerald Ford's New York -- there is a lot of heart on display here, both between Willie and his nephew and between the two old cranks. Still as funny as any word with a K in it.