Actors: Albert Brooks, Kathryn Harrold
Director: Albert Brooks
There are lowercase c comedies which involve ridiculous people getting into ridiculous situations saying ridiculous things. Hollywood has made an industry of these. Then there are capital C Comedies that try to get at the way people actually are, where the humor often derives from seeing a heightened version of ourself on the screen. Modern Romance belongs in the latter category and succeeds beautifully at portraying the neuroses involved with an on-again, off-again love affair.
Brooks utilizes a device I have almost never seen in a comedy film: the long take. After his breakup we get a several minute long shot of him bouncing around his apartment with uncertainty. Comedies usually excise the mundane, but this one revels in it, mining Brooks's character's self-doubt beautifully. Furthermore, Brooks's character exists in a lived-in world - he has a real job that's not just a series of montages. The film uses this job to comment on his love life in two brilliant sequences.
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