‘The Comedian’ AFI Review: Robert De Niro Skims the Surface as Washed-Up Stand-Up

De Niro’s Rupert Pupkin in “The King of Comedy” was a fame-hungry cretin with no performance skills; this time around, he’s Jackie Burke, an aging comic who never managed to match his fame from a decades-old hacky family sitcom called “Eddie’s Home.”

Strangers still call him “Eddie” on the street and spout his old catchphrases, but professionally, he’s reduced to playing half-filled comedy clubs in Hicksville (literally — Hicksville, N.Y.) and sharing bills with other old-timers like Jimmie “J.J.” Walker and Brett Butler (playing themselves).

A heckler with a YouTube channel gets physical with Jackie at that show, and the comic winds up doing 30 days behind bars.

“The Comedian” hints at Jackie’s darker side — his rage at the heckler, his cutting loose his previous manager when the sitcom gig came through, his strained relationship with his brother (Danny DeVito) and sister-in-law (Patti Lupone) — but director Taylor Hackford and a quartet of screenwriters never feel comfortable taking the plunge.

Men and women who are funny for a living tend to have a lot of complexity and barely-coiled anger within; Jackie has a bit of a temper, but for the most part, the movie paints him as an all-right Joe.

De Niro and Mann have a lovely rapport — it helps that the movie is aware that, as a couple, they’re totally age-inappropriate — and there are little moments that pop up throughout and hint at the wittier, livelier movie these people might have made together.

There’s a hilarious scene where DeVito scolds De Niro loudly, while muttering in secret that he’s only doing it to get his wife off his back.

In its most desperate moments, “The Comedian” turns to two of the cheapest ways possible to get a laugh: curse words from the very old and from the very young.