My Favorite Year (1982)

From the title, I assumed that the story would take place over the course of a year. Instead, it's only a few weeks, tops. All we really get from the title is a setting in the past and an occasion that is, like most comedies, happy in the end.

In 1954 New York, junior sketch comedy writer Benjy Stone (Mark Linn-Baker) is excited to have Alan Swann (Peter O'Toole), an Errol Flynn knockoff, guest-star on his show. Alas, the now burnt-out Swann is prone to stinking drunkenness, philandering, and tardiness if not absenteeism. Stone pleads with Sid Caesar-like show star Stan Kaiser (Joseph Bologna) to give Swann a chance all the same. Kaiser agrees on the condition that Stone watch Swann like a hawk. No problem, right?

One of the most prominent other characters is Sy Benson (Bill Macy), a rude, irritable boss who still caves to Kaiser's domineering presence. And lest you think there aren't enough jerks, a sideplot involves Karl Rojeck (Cameron Mitchell), a Jimmy Hoffa-type hooligan, trying to pressure Kaiser to stop mocking him with a routine. You know Rojeck won't take refusal lying down.

Even Stone doesn't come across as innocent, particularly when he courts co-writer K.C. Downing (Jessica Harper) against her wishes. He even chases her into the ladies' restroom and has the gall to order the other women out. Even for the '50s, that's bad. Why no one physically assaults him is beyond me. He does win Downing over eventually by switching to a gentler tactic, which works much faster than it ought to.

That's one reason for my "politically incorrect" tag. The other is Stone's stepfather (Ramon Sison), a Filipino ex-boxer who seems to be played for laughs just by virtue of being an unlikely husband to a New York Jew (Lainie Kazan). The '80s were not kind in depicting Asians.

Speaking of unlikely, I doubt you've recognized any actor's name besides O'Toole at this point. He was indeed the most expensive cast member, he got an Oscar nod for it, and the Netflix jacket description makes a point to focus heavily on him, with one sentence for Bologna at the end. Stone doesn't even rate a mention, leaving readers to wrongly assume who the first-person speaker of the title is.

It's kind of a pity, because the other actors are hardly bad at it. Linn-Baker, in fact, got me wondering why I haven't seen him in later works, apart from a supporting role in the much later Adam. Here he's channeling a young Mel Brooks with a touch of Woody Allen, supposedly because executive producer Brooks had a similar experience to events in the movie. That would explain why characters feel so exaggerated in spite of a non-farce plot.

For all the popularity of MFY, I found at most half the humor decent; the rest fell flat. For me, that's about par. I somewhat prefer the few moments of drama, when Stone and Swann awaken each other to what they are and what they can be. After all, seriousness is ironically what gives the comedy a happy ending.