“He’s the most idolized comedian ever,” Jerry Seinfeld says glowingly in “STEVE! (Martin) A Documentary in 2 Pieces,” an oddly shaped documentary that takes until its second half to elucidate what it’s really about and make the audience care. Featuring an epic (and overlong) three-hour runtime broken into two halves and told from two perspectives, ‘Then’ and ‘Now,’ they’re almost seemingly made by two different filmmakers, and only part two is genuinely captivating.
Directed by Academy Award winner Morgan Neville (“Won’t You Be My Neighbor?”), part one, ‘Then,’ is a bore, to be honest. Diving into Martin’s origins, childhood, and early days, this first chapter is primarily dedicated to his life in stand-up. Yet it mostly feels like going through the motions of the greatest hits of Martin’s comedy life; it’s well made but lacks true intimacy and personality to the point that it feels hollow.
READ MORE: ‘STEVE!’ Trailer:  Steven Martin ‘A Documentary In 2 Pieces’ Film Arrives March 29 On Apple TV
Mostly told from Martin’s perspective with anecdotes from friends and family, ‘Then’ is all context and features no talking heads and is wall-to-wall archival footage with Martin’s voice heard as a disembodied narrator. While Martin’s silly absurdism, a game-changer in comedy at the time (“He reinvented stand-up,” says SNL’s Lorne Micheals), turned the comedian into a massive comedy superstar by the end of the 70s, it took its toll, and something had to give. Martin became essentially bigger than most arena rock bands at the time, and by 1980, at the age of 35, he called it quits at the height of his fame.
While there are some clues of turmoil within this first chapter—an unhappy childhood, a disapproving father, and the loneliness and isolation of immense fame— it’s not really until ‘Now’ that “STEVE! (Martin) A Documentary in 2 Pieces” where it takes on poignant meaning, and finally reveals itself (thus becoming interesting). It’s a doc about a man who held the world at arm’s length for most of his life, was an enigma, and clung to his privacy. These struggles, quiet anguish, and personal struggles to connect are the substantive elements of the doc, but boy, does it really take a long time to get there.
‘Now’ welcomingly drops the exhaustingly distancing archival footage conceit—you’ve never thought you wished for a talking head reprieve to break up the relentless historical footage until now— and depicts Martin on screen today, reflecting on the ups and downs of his life, and finally becomes the much-needed intimate portrait the doc needed all along.
“A Documentary in 2 Pieces” illuminates Martin’s life as an avid art collector and knowledgeable patron, ultimately, a lonely endeavor that he seemingly only enjoyed alone, a recurring theme. Two people seem central to coaxing Martin out of his shell and dropping his guard: his friend and “Only Murders In The Building” comedic ally and dear friend Martin Short, and his wife, Anne Stringfield, a former New Yorker fact checker who met and bonded with the comedian over the phone.
Perhaps the entire doc’s conceit mirrors Martin’s worldview, cold and distancing at first and warmer and hospitable in the second half. That’s a neat trick, but does it pay to distance the viewer for 95 minutes to prove a thematic point? “STEVE! (Martin) A Documentary in 2 Pieces” could also arguably be further divided into three sections: stand-up comedy, which comprises most of ‘Then,’ and movies and TV, which encompasses all of the second chapter.
‘Now’ details much of Martin’s personal life, and you can read some of the pains he experiences about having to let the filmmakers into his life. ‘Now’ also details much of the heartbreaks Martin experienced in the film world. While there were early successes like “The Jerk” (1979), much of his oeuvre—at least from Martin’s perspective— feels filled with anguish, regrets, and compromise, and going down memory lane on them is filled with unpleasant land mines. There are bombs like the personal-to-him, “Pennies from Heaven,” where he learned to tap dance and trained for months, “L.A. Story” (where he met his first wife Victoria Tennant), and “Mixed Nuts,” which was brutally panned by everyone includes a cutting red carpet moment where Martin, who clearly doesn’t want to be there, is asked, “when did you stop being funny?” Clearly, the spotlight came with many daggers and arrows that deeply wounded him.
Even with something as beloved as John Hughes’ “Planes, Trains and Automobiles,” Martin’s most significant takeaway from the film is the lament and frustration that John Candy’s moving scene near the movie’s end was decimated in the edit. This concession never sat right with him, and like the decision to walk away from comedy, these collective painful moments led Martin to abandon movie-making.
It’s not really into the third section of TV where Martin reunites with “Three Amigos” co-star Martin Short on “Only Murders in The Building” and eventually resumes his stand-up with his co-star, where he finds creative happiness and satisfaction. It helps that ‘OMITB’ is critically acclaimed and beloved, but it’s also that the TV stakes are just low enough. Moreover, he’s having a blast working with his creative soulmate, Martin Short.
Martin draws the line at including his daughter with Stringfield in the film; at one point, she walks into the middle of the interview, which the film consists of, but she is rendered as an animated stick figure. She’s the one piece of privacy that the comedian won’t share with the outside world.
Fatherhood and marriage taming a man and exorcising his demons may sound cliché, but they seem to be the touchstones that change his life, finally inviting people in and not being so distanced from the world. Conversation with Short and Jerry Seinfeld, another friend and comedian who factors into the documentary, shows a man who, at 78 years of age, is finally starting to feel comfortable in his skin. Additional buddies like “Saturday Night Live” showrunner Lorne Michaels and New Yorker editor Adam Gopnik turn up too, generally sharing the same set of stories: Martin was closed off and reserved, and perhaps thanks to newfound overall wellness and happiness, he’s stopped retreating from the world. It’s not revelatory, and it gets repetitive, but at least part two is absorbing in its vulnerabilities.
“STEVE! (Martin) A Documentary in 2 Pieces” is about a transformation from aloof, closed-off, and sensitive to criticism to tentatively taking steps towards happiness and a fulfilled life. It’s compelling in its much more amiable golden years second half, but did it truly need to be three-plus hours long? In that regard, it might be for hardcore Steven Martin disciples only and serves as an example of the streaming age excess where runtime limits are there for a good reason. [B-]