Dying of Laughter Reviews

Alex de la Iglesia's unsentimental black comedy dissects the destructive relationship between the members of a popular Spanish comedy team as though it were a rare disease. As the film opens, revered comedians Nino (Santiago Segura) and Bruno (El Gran Wyoming) are trying to force each other off the highway en route to a highly anticipated TV comeback. Although the feuding former partners estranged for many years, flashbacks reveal how close they once were. They met in a backwater disco in 1972, where Nino was a lounge singer who longed to perform at swank clubs and Bruno was a bartender who aspired to be a TV host. They team up for an amateur contest and bomb, but an agent spots their chemistry. Shipped off to refine their act in the hinterlands, extroverted Bruno and shy Nino develop into Spain's answer to Martin and Lewis: A simple slap on Nino's kisser becomes their signature piece. Off stage, the jocular hostility turns into the real thing; ladies' man Bruno steals women from the timid Nino, who retaliates with cruel practical jokes. To freshen up the dynamics of the partnership, Bruno later becomes he who gets slapped; they stick together because it's clear that neither has the drawing power on his own that they have together. But the national treasures are too paranoid to enjoy success. Nino stages elaborate fake parties, so he can taunt Bruno by not inviting him; Bruno walks out on the act and lives like a pauper so he can spend all his savings on drugs that he intends to plant on Nino. Though both agree to reunite on the top-rated TV show "23-F," Bruno surreptitiously uses the event to launch his plan to destroy Nino. Writer-director de la Iglesia simultaneously serves up some genuinely side-splitting laughs, makes viewers cringe at Bruno and Nino's off-stage behavior, ridicules the way stale acts can still strike a sympathetic chord with audiences and examines the way in which show business successes warps and undermines performers' personalities.