WHEN WE WENT MAD (B) - There is nostalgia to be mined from exploring the good ol' days of publishing, back when you could have a blast and make good money printing a magazine. That joy sits at the core of this ribald documentary about the beloved, subversive Mad magazine.
In the 1960s and '70s, the ribald magazine, touting an initial motto of "Humor in a jugular vein," had circulation above 1 million, peaking above 2 million in 1974. It catered to its Baby Boomer readership with a mixture of clever satire and puerile idiocy. It was fronted by its goofy mascot, gap-toothed Alfred E. Neuman. Its cartoons could set your parents' hair on fire. If you know it, you know it.
This coke-fueled documentary knows its timeline (a Mad historian, Grant Geissman, is a main talking head) and has a riot reminiscing with former editors, writers and artists, as well as a bevy of fanboys (they are all male, of course), including Weird Al Yankovic, Howie Mandel, Gilbert Gottfried, Brian Cranston, Quentin Tarantino, David Zucker and the requisite appearance by the always available Judd Apatow.
Director Alan Bernstein walks through the magazine's origins as a 1950s comic book birthed from the stable of Educational Comics (EC), which was known for its line of pulp horror titles, as well as a connection to DC Comics and the Superman franchise. It wasn't until EC ditched all of its sleazy titles -- under pressure from Congress, which cracked down on the scourge of comic books -- and spun Mad off into a glossy magazine that things started turning up. Once Alfred E. Neuman came aboard, the rest was history.
The film looks fondly on Mad's founder, William Gaines, who took the business over from his father, and who is treated with the same reverence Harold Ross still gets at the New Yorker a century later. Gaines, who died more than 30 years ago, brought on Al Feldstein as editor for Mad's first 30 years. Feldstein and a bunch of other former colleagues savor reminiscing about the camaraderie at the publication and all the crazy hijinks they got away with. One alum sums up the experience as one of being "deeply embarrassed and fiercely proud."
All the greatest hits are here: the backpage fold-in gag; Spy vs. Spy; the razor-sharp ad parodies. Famed cartoonist Don Martin (the one whose characters had the floppy feet) gets barely a minute of screen time (perhaps punishment for having jumped shipped for Cracked in the late '80s). While the whole enterprise was generally silly, Mad's parent company took its free-speech rights seriously -- it defended the right to parody songs all the way to the Supreme Court, and won. The staff certainly enjoyed its success -- Gaines would take them on annual trips to exotic locales -- and Mad had mixed results with empire building, which included a board game, a cinematic bomb (1980's "Up the Academy") and a crude TV show ("Mad TV"). It all started to hit the skids by the '90s, fizzling out as an anachronism in the era of the internet and social media.
The film is rife with busy graphics and scatter-shot editing, and it often has the cheap feel of a VH-1 "I Love the '80s" special. It also was apparently just dumped online, streaming free on YouTube (though I enjoyed it with a crowd at the theater). But the celebrities are engaging, and the ex-staffers show a genuine affection for the work they accomplished. It was easier back then to have a gas doing what you loved if you hit on the right formula for success, no matter how embarrassing your printed product could be at times.
JIM & ANDY: THE GREAT BEYOND (2017) (B-minus) - There is something off-putting about this look behind the scenes at Jim Carrey portraying Andy Kaufman on the set of the 1999 film "Man on the Moon." And it's not just the reminder that we don't like biopics, especially ones involving contemporary subjects.
Talented documentarian Chris Smith ("Fyre," "The Yes Men," "Devo") is just too enamored with the central gimmick here: "never before seen" on-set footage of Carrey immersing himself into not only the character of Andy Kaufman but also Kaufman's alter-ego, the obnoxious Tony Clifton. It's the tired trope of the method actor's immersion into a character to the detriment of his mental health and to the frustration of everyone around him.
The best parts here involve an older and wiser (and sagely bearded) Carrey, nearly two decades after the filming of the biography, sitting for an extensive interview to not only look back on his wild celebrity during the 1990s but also to put into perspective the full arc of his career and his ensuing philosophy of life. That part is worth the price of admission. Carrey is thoughtful and contemplative, and he articulates his brand of Taoism through generously dispensed koans.
The old footage from the set can be fascinating at first -- Carrey-as-Kaufman refuses to break character and rampages through the set like the provocateur he is portraying -- but it soon grows tiresome. Most of his co-stars, including a few pals from Kaufman's "Taxi" days, don't hide their eye-rolls at Carrey's obnoxious behaviour, and "Man in the Moon" director Milos Forman (the auteur behind classics like "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest") perpetually looks like he wants to wring his star's neck. The film is weighed down by the excessive footage of a young Carrey behaving like a 12-year-old jerk.
Smith also weaves in footage from other Carrey touchstones from the era, in a bid to sync with Carrey's magical thinking which suggests that some divine being was sending films and characters to him at just the right time in his life. That includes "Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind" (director Michel Gondry apparently delighted in finding out that Carrey was miserable from a break-up just in time to begin planning the production) and, most obviously, "The Truman Show" (which Carrey not-so-humbly dubs a "prophecy"). It's all a bit far-fetched. (Hmm. What was the universe revealing to him when he signed up to talk with his butt in "Ace Ventura: Pet Detective"?)
But Carrey grounds the film with his sober analysis in the present day of 2017. His pearls of wisdom -- "I don't need to be held together. I'm fine just floating through space like Andy" -- are comforting, and you cheer him on for growing beyond a Jerry Lewis-like career of variations on "Dumb & Dumber." If only the whole "Man in the Moon" kerfuffle wasn't such a cliched look back at wacky Hollywood antics.