Loved Her, Only Liked the Movie

Forget the last 30 or so seasons of SNL, where in the space of a weekly 90 minutes, you get about 42 seconds of laughter.   Lazy, sloppy, mean humor engineered by the physically and mentally bloated Lorne Michaels who has been stealing money from NBC for decades.

Do not forget the first years of SNL when it was new, fresh, and innovative. For my money, the biggest talent in that original cast was Gilda Radner, who was sadly taken away from us all by ovarian cancer at the age of 43.  A flame snuffed out way too soon.

The new documentary "Love, Gilda" tries very hard to re-introduce us all to Gilda's talent and vibrancy.  Luckily, film maker Lisa D'Apolito has at her fingertips lots and lots of Gilda's diaries and home movies.  Indeed, the ipso facto narrator is Gilda herself from hours of audio tapes.  With all this wonderful reference material, you would think this would be a deeper journey into Radner's live.   Sadly, it is enough.   I see that CNN has some sort of back room hand at this.   That explains the skimpiness in spades.

Oh, don't get me wrong.   It is delightful to see all the clips of Gilda's work on both SNL and the Broadway stage...a one woman show at the Winter Garden I myself saw.  But there were not enough talking heads to lend their stories about Gilda.  Most particularly absent were some of the SNL original cast.   You got Lorne Michaels, Laraine Newman, and Chevy Chase whose career is so empty he would talk to a fire hydrant.   But where was Dan Aykroyd and Bill Murray, both of whom once dated Gilda?   Where was Jane Curtin?  Last I heard, all three of them were still on this side of the living.

Instead, you got regular intrusions from the later SNL droids.   Frankly, I don't give a shit what Amy Poehler or Bill Hader or Maya Rudolph think about Gilda.  None of them have 1/100th of the magic Gilda had.

Of course, Radner's story takes the inevitable dark, sad turn and it is illuminated with lots of home movies during chemotherapy.   While difficult to watch, they reinforced her courage as well as the love shared with her husband, Gene Wilder, who is also now sorely missed.  

I wish there were more performance snippets of Gilda and zero cutaways to Poehler and company.  This was valuable screen time that was sadly wasted.   

So, yes, I loved Gilda, but only liked "Love, Gilda."   I guess this is what you get when you let CNN get involved.

LEN'S RATING:  Three stars.

Dinner last night:  Had a big lunch, so just a sandwich.