MOVIE REVIEW : Women Get Last Laugh in ‘Wisecracks’

In the documentary “Wisecracks,” Canadian filmmaker Gail Singer fills the screen with the routines of almost two dozen female stand-up comics ranging from Whoopi Goldberg and Paula Poundstone to Ellen DeGeneres and Jenny Jones (in her pre-talk-show-host days). Seeing so many of these comics on stage as well as interviewed away from the spotlight, it seems as if there is a whole universe of experience on screen.

It’s a universe that, for the most part, has been neglected in the stand-up comedy mania. Women stand-up comics are rarely headliners, they don’t play the talk-show circuit with the same regularity as their male counterparts and they don’t make the transition to movie and TV roles nearly as often. Singer, whose earlier documentaries have been primarily sociopolitical, tries to preserve for us the one-on-one directness of the live theater experience. She’s trying to delve into the comics’ world and get at some of the reasons why audiences find women stand-up performers so threatening.

To that end, she works in footage of earlier generations of women comics, ranging from Mae West and Gracie Allen to Carol Burnett and Lucille Ball. (Phyllis Diller acts as a kind of historical tour guide.) Even though we’re supposed to laugh at these clips, their inclusion is meant to point up the rut of self-hatred that cuts across the careers of female comics. “Wisecracks” has a double-edged purpose: It’s both a hoot and a polemic. It’s not just about being a female stand-up comic; it’s about what it’s like to be a funny woman in a man’s world.

The comedy material in “Wisecracks” (at the Ken through Saturday) works better than the sociohistorical stuff. The jumble of black-and-white clips of famous female comics doesn’t really provide an extensive historical overview; worse, we’re elbowed into viewing these women in a way that’s somewhat insulting to their art. What does it mean to imply that comic performers like Gracie Allen or Martha Raye were self-deprecating? Is it so terrible to make fun of yourself if that’s what you do best and if you can make people laugh along with you? The assumption behind “Wisecracks” is that women, to make it as comics, had to act goofy and demure and coy; any male-directed aggressiveness, any threat to “femininity” had to be expunged.

It’s possible to accept this view without overvaluing it, or limiting it exclusively to women. (Rodney Dangerfield, to cite one example out of a male multitude, isn’t exactly an Everest of ego.) Singer wants to have it both ways: She wants us to laugh at all the wonderful self-deprecating humor in “Wisecracks” (Times-rated: Mature) but she also wants us to recognize how regressive it all is.

The same principle operates with the contemporary footage; the comics are encouraged to wax philosophic about the political correctness of their acts (which are mostly presented to us in brief, abrupt snippets). After seeing them on stage, watching the interviews is like watching them go from white-hot to cooled-out. Singer is a solid, searching documentarian, but she doesn’t share the show-biz instincts of her comic subjects. For all their reasoned talk about the disadvantages of being female comics, they have a freestyle, in-your-face quality on stage that cancels out the filmmaker’s finger-pointing.

What you get from the best of these women comics, such as DeGeneres and Goldberg and Joy Behar and a parody singing group called the Clichettes, is exactly what you get from the best of the male stand-up comics: the sensation that they are only fully alive on stage. Laughter is the best revenge.

‘Wisecracks’

An Alliance Releasing presentation. Director Gail Singer. Producer Gail Singer and Signe Johansson. Executive producer Susan Cavan. Cinematographer Zoe Dirse and Bob Fresco. Editor Gordon McClellan. Music Maribeth Solomon. Running time: 1 hour, 33 minutes.

Times-rated Mature.