Ok, so I messed up. I did not realize that this movie actually came out after Big did. So, not quite the order I was hoping to happen but it's close enough.
Anyways, Punchline is about two aspiring comedians. One is a medical school drop out, who never really wanted to go to medical school in the first place. The other is a housewife, who always had a dreamed of making people laugh for a living. They are both very different ages, and very different lifestyles with the one thing in common of putting smiles of people's faces. They get to know each other and help out one another. She is not very good with the jokes, he is, and his personal life is just a whole big mess, and she provides some stability. Everything comes to a head when they are both asked to compete at the club for a spot on Johnny Carson's TV show.
Now, here is the reason that I said that I know I made the mistake and watching this movie and Big in the wrong order on accident. The reason was because at the time of production of this film the studio was trying to figure out when to release the film. They knew that it was not going to be the biggest movie they ever had they knew it could do fairly well at the box office. I mean they had Sally Fields and John Goodman. They even had Tom Hanks, who was not a crazy insane blockbuster movie start yet but people knew who he was.
Fields and Hanks put a lot of work into this movie to make it a success. They both studies stand up comedians and they both worked on what their characters. Ms. Fields said it took her about six months to figure out how to mirror her character to make it perfect. Mr. Hanks created a routine and performed it many times and it was a flop. He said that after a month on performing stand up he finally didn't "sweat like a pig" on stage.
The date of release was finally set after Big came out. Big was such a huge success that the studio thought it would be the perfect time to capitalize on the fact that Mr. Hanks was in the film. It seem to have paid off.
It's not the biggest film that Mr. Hanks has ever made. It's not even a movie that most people nowadays even know exists! There is something really eye opening about this movie and I think it's the first time we get to see a glimpse of the true acting that we have come to know from Mr. Hanks. There is one scene in the film where it made me stop dead in my tracks and made me really pay attention to what was happening. It went from "normal" to "wow" in a matter of seconds. It was the first time that you watched him and thought that he was really raw and real in that moment that it wasn't a movie that I was watching. I think that, if I didn't already know where his career was going to end up at this point, that would have been the moment that I would have known he would have become a great star.
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