编剧: 史蒂夫·伯恩
主演: 欧阳万成 / 黛比·瑞恩 / 莫洽·梦若 / 比尔·伯尔 / 郑肯 / 更多...
类型: 喜剧
制片国家/地区: 美国
语言: 英语
上映日期: 2020-10-16(美国)
又名: 开场一刻
IMDb链接: tt8633748
主角Will O'Brien梦想成为一名单口喜剧演员。当他有机会为自己的偶像Billy G做开场表演时，他必须决定是继续自己已规划好的生活，还是去逐梦喜剧圈....
Will Chu is stuck in a thankless job while trying to pursue his true passion in life, becoming a stand-up comedian. When he gets the opportunity he's been waiting for, the emcee slot on the road opening for his hero Billy G., the realities of life on the stage come crashing in. Between relentless hecklers, drunk comedy groupies and hard-to-impress morning radio DJs, things get off to a rough start. Even if he can learn from his idols and overcome the challenges, he'll have to prove he has what it takes to make his dream a reality. Written by RLJE Films
连中文字幕都没有字幕组肯做，伴着英文字幕看完的，其实还挺好看的，喜欢脱口秀的人或从业者值得一看，从冷场到取回自信，一个脱口秀演员的开始之路
If you are a fan of comedy, then you are already well aware of Steve. I have had the pleasure of seeing him a few time when he has come to the Bay Area, and he never disappoints. If you have seen him perform, then you already know this. Having said that, while listening to Bill Burr's podcast this past week, Steve was on the show and they were promoting his new film, which he said was loosely based on his story. I couldn't wait to rent it so that my wife and I could have an official excuse for not touching each other while in bed. I kid, I mean my partner, I mean my day old socks. All joking aside, Steve's film is exactly what we need in these Covid times. It's bitter sweet, because as comedy fans, we know that comedians are struggling due to Covid. Luckily, comedian's like Steve, and others, who are fortunate enough, and have the resources, can still bring laughter into our lives while showing us the struggles from the other side of the comedy club. Thank you Steve for this perspective on a comic's journey. Hope to see more great work from you and others in the years to come, and of course can't wait to see you live again when you visit the Bay Area.
Bottom line, if you love comedy, then you will love this story. Rent it, or buy it, you won't regret it.
The story has an interesting idea, but is executed very poorly... slow and akward pacing makes the movie very boring. You see very early on that the director and comedian Steve Byrne has not much experience in directing and tries his best to put his personal experience with stand up on the screen. It has some funny jokes and the right message, but lacks in skill set. The acting of the most actors are terrible (and i am huge stand up fan and know all the comedians). The dialog scenes are little off and delivered poorly.
I follow most comedians and their podcasts and was happy to see many known faces but it makes it even more dissapointing to see them in a bad movie.
Imagine, for a moment, that a stand-up comic is just like a superhero. On stage, he’s a master of the universe, armored and impervious, slinging jokes like lightning bolts. He defeats all adversaries, from hecklers to the potential indifference of the audience; laughter, of course, is his way of killing. If that’s what a stand-up comic is, then “The Opening Act,” Steve Byrne’s wryly likable shoestring indie comedy about a young man trying to make it in the world of stand-up, might be described as a stand-up-comedy origin story.
Will Chu, played by Jimmy O. Yang of “Silicon Valley,” is an aspiring comic who’s been doing open-mic nights in his small hometown of Steubenville, Ohio. He’s got some funny material. He grew up watching stand-up on TV with his immigrant father (they bonded over it like sports), and he knows the form, works on his bits, and has the instinct for playing off his appearance and persona — in his case, the fact that he’s an extremely youthful-looking Asian-American with long hair parted down the middle and the face of an impish angel. “I’m not, like, the macho guy,” says Will in one of his establishing jokes. “I wish I could be that guy. Like, I’m really good-looking if you’re into anime.”
Watching Will, we want him to succeed, because he’s a sweet dude, and he wants it so much. He’s got an adoring girlfriend (Debby Ryan) and a day job working as a cubicle drone at a car-insurance company. So when he gets the chance to MC a four-night stretch of shows at the Pennsylvania Improv in Pittsburgh, it’s a potential big break, his first rung up the ladder to a career as a professional stand-up. He’s so bent on doing the shows that when his boss (Bill Burr) won’t give him a day off, he quits his job to take the gig.
Will has the desire and, we hope, the material. But does he have the attitude? The world of stand-up comedy is a fascinating and, in many ways, scurrilous place, and Will, arriving at the Improv (where he looks up to see his name on the marquee spelled “Will Chew”), is like the virgin at a frat-house party. He doesn’t smoke pot, do blow, or go to strip clubs. That makes him, at this club, odd nerd out.
Chris (Alex Moffat), the other featured comic under the headliner, is a reckless womanizer, a party dude who wears his sleaze on his sleeve. Yet he’s also a total pro who’s comfortable in his skin on stage; he’s always killing. Even Chip (Neal Brennan), the quizzical club manager, has an in-your-face way about him (when he asks for Will’s cell-phone number, it turns out he’s flirting with him). What everyone at the club has is a certain aggro quality that’s wound into the DNA of stand-up.
Will, by contrast, is a polite dweeb who totes his joke notebook onstage with him like a security blanket. The first night, he gets through his set just fine, muffing only the easy part: his intro to the headliner, Billy G (Cedric the Entertainer), a blustery former sitcom star who is one of Will’s idols. And Will has three more nights to make up for it.
But then the unthinkable happens. He starts to bomb.
After a wild, dissolute night that begins with him playing wingman for the horndog Chris, he accompanies Chris to a radio interview the following morning. Will’s only job, during the 10-minute PR spot, is to toss a few jokes around. He tries, but doesn’t cut it. He’s cringingly earnest, and that dead air is more mesmerizing than any of the jokes.
What’s gripping about Will’s failure isn’t just that he blows the spot (and gets mocked for it on the radio afterward). It’s that everything that’s wrong about his approach seems to emerge from what a nice guy he is. He has lunch at a diner with Billy G, played by Cedric with a perfect fusion of encouragement and worldly indifference. Billy tells him, “Even being a headliner don’t mean you’re a comic.” You’ve got to “find your own point-of-view, get your own voice, get selfish with that shit.” And he’s right. Good stand-up comics don’t just make you laugh — they electrify the air around them, drawing you into their own heads.
It’s that selfishness that Will lacks. Jimmy O. Yang gives a slyly appealing performance as a comic who may be too good a person to be a nightclub star. Having heard Billy’s advice, we expect Will to go on stage and get better, but instead he falls down a rabbit hole of his own dithering — right on stage. It’s cringe-inducing. (The hecklers who keep saying “Ohio sucks!” seem to be right.) And in its way, it’s an authentic scene of the sort I’ve never quite encountered before in a movie about stand-up.
Becoming a successful stand-up comic is an uphill climb, one that not everybody is cut out for, and “The Opening Act” is a likable ode to those hard knocks. The film is full of comedians who speak in peppery patter — like Ken Jeong, as the mentor of Will’s who sets up the Improv gig for him, or “SNL’s” Alex Moffat, who incarnates a certain breed of prankish masculine club-stage bravado that’s searching for the humanity beneath the toxicity. The aggression of stand-up comedy is the fuel that’s needed to be funny, the fuel that lets a comedian survive. But seeing Will creep up to embracing the X factor of comedy is more than just funny — it’s moving. He’s learning, for the first time, how to play himself, and turning that into a hilarious state of grace.
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