Picture This review – Bridgerton star can’t save tinny romcom

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Simone Ashley tries her best in Amazon’s gimmicky romantic comedy but it’s too flimsy and forgettable to demand our attention I am generally wary of streaming platform originals, so often do they feel like the fast fashion of the film world: cheap, disposable, chasing ephemeral interests and brittle with repeat use. But I will give Netflix, Amazon and co props for this: for nearing a decade now, they have attempted to fill a void left by the theatrical box office, whose hollowed-out market rarely supports the mid-budget adult films – particularly romcoms and erotic thrillers – that routinely entertained non-franchise audiences in decades past. Only occasionally do they succeed, as in the case of Netflix’s Do Revenge or Players , but the mission remains worthwhile. Picture This, a new romcom from Amazon Prime Video, has promising elements suggesting it could be one of the better entries. Namely: the presence of Simone Ashley, the always luminous breakout star of the Netflix confectio...
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The King of Comedy at 40: Martin Scorsese’s painful ode to the wannabe

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In the dark, dry comedy, Robert De Niro plays a scheming comedian whose mediocrity doesn’t dampen his ambition

There’s a sequence in Martin Scorsese’s The King of Comedy, where Jerry Langford, the host of a popular late-night talk show, slips out of his New York office and goes for a walk down the street. Everyone knows who he is, but how they interact with him varies. He’s charmed by a middle-aged taxi driver who greets him and tells him how much he enjoys the show. He’s happy to get an ovation from construction workers overhead. Then he’s stopped by a woman at a payphone who wants him to sign her magazine. He obliges. Then she wants him to say something to her nephew on the phone. He politely declines. As he walks away, she shouts after him: “You should only get cancer. I hope you get cancer.”

Nothing about this is out of the ordinary. It’s surely not the first time a fan has wished cancer on Jerry for not obliging a request, and he’s probably forgotten about this woman the moment he crosses the street. His chief expression is one of annoyance, because this is the price of being a celebrity and he’s going to be paying for it the rest of his life. People invite him into their homes every night on television and he becomes part of their lives, but it’s a one-sided relationship that he couldn’t reciprocate if he wanted to. As played by Jerry Lewis, who surely knows the feeling, he looks like a man who often regrets fame, but can’t do anything about it.

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