MOVIE REVIEW : Show-Bizzy ‘Joey’ Has Stellar Cast

“Joey Takes a Cab” (at the Monica 4-Plex) has a million of them. And, as often happens in seedy little dives where the comics have rumpled suits--some of them click; some of them don’t.

At its best, “Joey” is engagingly profane: a knowing, low-budget comedy, done from the inside, about the underbelly of ‘50s show biz. At its worst, it’s a movie that gets threadbare, frayed at the edges, disconnected, that goes too teary and schmaltzy too soon.

It’s principally set in a funeral home, where a motley collection of old comics, managers, musicians, dancers, strippers, waitresses and hookers have gathered to pay their last respects to Joey (Oo-Oo) Ray, an elderly comic (Lionel Stander) who died while gigging at the old folks home.

But the respects Joey’s old pals pay are far from respectful. One after the other, they recall the seaminess of his life: his seedy jobs, his dirty jokes, his off-color habits and gags, his lecherous liaisons.

The movie, made for less than $1 million, has a remarkable cast for the money. Lionel Stander, gravelly and abrasive as ever, plays Joey, and his mourners include: Michael J. Pollard as a demented Farmer’s Market hanger-on, Royal Dano as a bartender, Kathleen Freeman as the eldest of the hooker trio and Kaye Ballard as an obnoxious weeper. Comic Jackie Gayle appears as himself, trading cynical cracks with Lenny Bruce’s mother, Sally Marr, in a front pew. And the writer, Frankie Ray Perilli, plays the crassest of the comedians, the one who keeps reading the Racing Form during the elegies.

This is a wonderful ensemble, but, unfortunately, “Joey” doesn’t really play like an ensemble piece. One after another, the cameo stars, about 20 in all, file up and do their bits, dirty monologues followed by a catch-in-the-throat farewell, and it’s as if they’re all in separate acts at a telethon. There’s no sense of forward motion and not much crowd interaction.

When the one outsider, Joey’s illegitimate daughter, musters up the biggest show-biz cliche of all (“I think there’s a lot of love in this room”), “Joey” is getting shameless. And it gets more shameless still when St. Peter pops up at this Jewish funeral, spritzing about the Last Supper.

The script tips its hand too soon. The outrages begin immediately, without any sense of the proprieties being gradually eroded. And when the movie does go over the top--dragging in twin transvestites who try to crawl into the coffin and a young rabbi who goes raunchy--the bits still have a hermetic feel, as if everything was shot on separate days, with little cast mingling.

Watching “Joey Takes a Cab” (Times rated: Mature, for language), I kept thinking of Sidney Lumet’s underrated “Bye-Bye, Braverman,” another comedy about a funeral, but also about the real cinematic art it takes to shoot this kind of “stage-bound” movie.

Producer-director Albert Band, a longtime movie veteran (mostly of horror films and spaghetti Westerns), deserves credit for choosing this material and assembling the cast--and for helping bring off an occasional showstopper, such as Eileen Brennan’s monologue about Joey and Errol Flynn at Schwab’s. But he’s shot it too straight and easy, and the script is probably too straight and easy to begin with. After each new elegy, you can practically hear the inward rumble: “But seriously, folks. . . .”

‘Joey Takes a Cab’

Joey: Lionel Stander

Laura: Eileen Brennan

Gina: Kaye Ballard

Himself: Jackie Gayle

A Bandwagon Productions Inc. production. Director-producer Albert Band. Executive producers Linda Obalil, Jim Stewart. Screenplay Frank Ray Perilli. Cinematographer Stewart. Editor Peter Teschner. Music Fritz Heede. With Royal Dano, Michael J. Pollard, Sondra Currie, Kathleen Freeman, Alex Cord. Running time: 1 hour, 32 minutes.

Times rated: Mature (language).