That was an excellent one.

This is a small, humorous movie in some ways, but it has a huge heart. What a nice experience.

Let me be very fair here, this is not the best movie in my opinion. But, this movie is fun, it has purpose and is very enjoyable to watch.

The acting in this movie is really good.

I wouldn't call Peter Chelsom's "Funny Bones" a comedy as much as a look at how we interpret comedy. Oliver Platt plays the son of a famous comedian (Jerry Lewis). When his comedy act bombs, he sneaks off to Blackpool, England, to hook up with some old acquaintances and possibly assemble a better act.Despite the presence of Jerry Lewis*, this isn't any kind of silly movie at all. It has a very serious side. A major focus is how the father expects the son to follow in his path, despite the son's having a different set of talents. But all in all, what results is a very fine piece of work, definitely one that you should see. It's too bad that Peter Chelsom went on to direct "Town & Country" and "Hannah Montana: The Movie".Also starring Lee Evans (Tucker in "There's Something About Mary"), Leslie Caron, Richard Griffiths (Uncle Vernon in the Harry Potter movies), Oliver Reed and Ian McNeice.*Other serious movies in which Jerry Lewis starred are "The King of Comedy" by Martin Scorsese and "Arizona Dream" by Emir Kusturica.

In spite of how it was originally promoted, Funny Bones has very little to do with stand up comedy. Its convoluted and somewhat confusing storyline tends to undermine its good points....namely, strong photography, quirky characters and many highly imaginative scenes. Many viewers may give up on this film halfway through, but the best is at the end. Several mesmerizing minutes of showmanship provide the climax of the film and it's well worth the wait. Oliver Platt fans should consider this a must, although his character is not particularly likable nor well-drawn. Jerry Lewis essentially plays himself and is effective. In the second half of the movie, Leslie Caron and especially Lee Evans as the puzzling Jack Parker, steal the show with some fine performances. An offbeat cult film with numerous rewarding moments. As Leonard Maltin loves to say, "Not for all tastes."

How did I never hear of Lee Evans before I saw this movie? He is my new idol. When this movie came out, I gave it a miss because of Jerry Lewis (King of Comedy notwithstanding -- he gives me the creeps, man), but I caught it on Sundance the other night and was bowled over. It starts out sorta weird, but then hooks you with the story of this guy trying to be a standup comic in the shadow of his showbiz-legend dad (is there any worse word than "showbiz"? Maybe "node," but other than that, "showbiz" is just such a bad word!!!), and then all of a sudden you are in Blackpool, England, being treated to (a) some amazing vaudeville performers from an era sadly gone by, and (b) some amazing performances by clowny guys (not the creepy kind), and (c) Leslie Caron singing a torch song in a man-tailored shirt, and (d) a beautiful story of lost dreams, redemption, and wax eggs. Rent it, fool. Rent it now if you have a funny bone in your body.

Not really a comedy - more a surreal, sometimes weirdly comic piece about comedians, about families, about the awfulness of having a famous father, about genius, about the problem of what makes a comic funny, about the sublime sadness of failure. Lee Evans is absolutely haunting as the tortured comic genius, the natural comic who is so purely a comedian that he can barely communicate except in gags, yet who will never be allowed to perform in public because of his dark past. Leslie Caron is heart-rending as his mother, a brave, faded French beauty stranded for ever singing mildly risque songs in Blackpool pubs, and their tender scenes together are for me the best thing in the whole film.The whole cast is incredible...right down to Oliver Reed camping it up gloriously in a bizarre sub-plot which at first I thought might be part of the Evans' character's fevered imagination. It is a movie absolutely crammed with magic but in one of my favourite scenes, Oliver Platt arrives in Blackpool and instantly sees it peopled with characters from Donald McGill postcards - fat ladies, saucy girls with flouncy skirts, burly men. The ending is a bit wonky and looks to my eye to have been changed from a tragic one to a "happy" one to please audiences. In the two opening sequences, both Evans and Platt utter the words "I'm going to die" in very different circumstances, and mean very different things, and other variations on the theme of death and laughter follow - all this seemed to be pointing down a much darker alleyway than the one we got. Doesn't matter, though. Still a great movie.