![]() ![]() ![]() He’s still grieving their loss, is in a protracted legal battle with an uncle for control of the operation, and has such difficulty standing up for himself that he has taken to hiding behind the curtains at the company’s offices to avoid dealing with unhappy customers. Marty has recently inherited his rich parents’ fabric business in New York’s garment district. After a 2010 prologue hinting at an ugly end to Ike and Marty’s many interwoven relationships, the story proper begins in 1982. Ike” is in any way overstepping his professional boundaries or being a bad influence on Marty is to be cast aside and shunned, while each of Ike’s brainstorms gets first dibs at Marty’s seemingly limitless checkbook.Īdapted by Georgia Pritchett ( Veep, Succession) and primarily directed by Michael Showalter (a longtime Rudd collaborator going back to Wet Hot American Summer), Shrink is billed as a dark comedy, but mostly it’s just dark, and sad, and fairly repetitive. But those periodic stabs at their shared creative past help make a muddle of a story that works far less than 60 percent of the time.īased on the hit nonfiction podcast by reporter Joe Nocera, it casts Rudd in the title role as Ike Herschkopf, a psychiatrist who spends nearly 30 years insinuating himself into the life of wealthy patient Marty Markowitz (Ferrell), becoming Marty’s best friend, surrogate brother, business partner, and even taking over the bulk of Marty’s inherited summer home in the Hamptons. Rudd and Ferrell’s new Apple TV+ miniseries The Shrink Next Door is not really trying for that aesthetic, though it features ugly Eighties fashions, some broad regional accents, and occasional musical interludes. But the 60 percent that does can be so overwhelmingly funny that it feels like those films are working every time. ![]() Does it make more sense than Ron would argue? I’m not talking about Sex Panther itself, since other characters compare its aroma to “pure gasoline,” “a used diaper filled with Indian food,” and “a turd covered in burnt hair.” Rather, there is a glorious messiness to the Anchorman movies - and to many of the comedies inspired by it, often involving the same actors and/or producers - in which a sizable chunk doesn’t work. I have watched Anchorman often over the years, and thought a lot about that “60 percent” line in particular. In Anchorman, Paul Rudd’s Seventies TV newsman Brian Fantana says of his beloved Sex Panther cologne, “They’ve done studies, you know: 60 percent of the time, it works every time.” Will Ferrell’s Ron Burgundy considers this equation for a moment, then replies, “That doesn’t make sense.” ![]()
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