Real Life

Albert Brooks plays himself: a director who wants to film a year in the life of an ordinary American family and turn it into a scientific study. A family is chosen. Cameras are installed in the house, the crew moves in and filming begins. The family cannot behave normally in front of the camera. The director is unhappy with what he is getting and starts to intervene; he steers events, stages scenes, and ends up becoming the subject of the film himself. Albert Brooks directs and takes the lead. The target is clear: at the start of the seventies in America a real documentary series filmed a family for months and broadcast it. That production caused a large argument and the family broke up. Brooks imitates it directly. The narrative is built on observation changing what is observed, and gives it as comedy. The film was made twenty years before reality programming filled television and is now read as a criticism of that genre. Brooks's comic manner is dry and uncomfortable; the more confident the character grows the harder it is to watch. It attracted little interest on release and became a cult film afterwards. Who it is for: viewers who like dry humour and satire of the media. Who it is not for: the pacing is irregular, the humour is cold, and the narrative offers no plot.