All Joking Aside (2020)

(On Cable TV, November 2020) Considering my fascination for stand-up comedy, I’m probably going to see every single film about stand-up comedians sooner or later. While All Joking Aside often feels similar to Standing Up, Falling Down in studying a close mentor relationship between aspiring and experienced stand-up comedians, it quickly becomes its own film. Raylene Harewood makes for an incredibly appealing heroine as a young woman with family issues, health concerns and a drive to become a stand-up comedian in a notoriously unforgiving field. Brian Markinson is her foil as a bitter washed-up veteran who wasted his potential and lost his own family along the way—they meet when he heckles her during her first open mic and it’s a long way to building the intergenerational friendship that the film eventually relies upon. You can make a case that All Joking Aside plays it too safe—but I don’t think that you can fault the film for it. It’s meant as a moderately realistic take on stand-up comedy apprenticeship, and I appreciate that it doesn’t take too many wild leaps of absurdity or aggression along the way. Like many other films about stand-up comedy, it’s not all that funny when it’s not taking place on a stage: it focuses a lot on the pains and trials of the comedians in between the punchlines. The result is amiable enough—Harewood is a promising actress, and Markinson does credibly step into the shoes of a once-legendary comedian. It makes for a nice package—familiar, for sure, well telegraphed in its plot beats but likable all the way through.