Funny Bones

A film that begins in Las Vegas and continues in Blackpool. Tommy wants to be a comedian. His father is a great name and the son lives in his shadow. One night he goes on stage. The act is a disaster; the audience does not laugh and he runs off. He realises he is stealing his father's routines. He has nothing of his own. He goes to England. To Blackpool, where his childhood was spent and where his father has a past. He makes a plan. He will hide who he is, listen to the local comedians, and look for an act he can buy. From there the film runs two lines side by side. Tommy's search and a family in the town. The Parker brothers perform. Jack, Bruno and Thomas; their father is an old showman and the family has been on the same stage for years. Jack is strange. He does not speak, keeps away from people, and becomes someone else entirely on stage. There is an old matter as well. Something happened in Blackpool thirty years ago and Tommy's father was in it. What the narrative is interested in is not comedy but inheritance: its idea is whether being funny can be learned or is in the bone, and the title says exactly that. The tone is unsteady and deliberately so. The narrative opens as comedy, enters a line about a killing in the middle, and turns entirely to sadness at the end. Blackpool is inside the narrative. The front, the pier, the circus and the old variety halls; the town is shot like a graveyard of entertainment. Jerry Lewis plays the father, and it is among the most notable of the performer's late works. Lee Evans comes from stage comedy and the physical sections really are his own work. Oliver Platt, Jerry Lewis, Lee Evans and Leslie Caron are in the cast. Peter Chelsom directed and co-wrote. Who it is for: anyone who likes strange British films with a mixed tone. Who it is not for: anyone looking for consistency; the narrative enters three separate genres and comes apart for some viewers.