Apple Original Films this month unveiled the trailer for the highly anticipated film “STEVE! (martin) a documentary in 2 pieces,” starring Steve Martin, Finn Wittrock, Martin Short, Tina Fey, Jerry Seinfeld, Eric Idle, Diane Keaton, and Selena Gomez, and directed by Academy Award winner Morgan Neville.
Steve Martin is one of the most beloved and enigmatic figures in entertainment. “STEVE! (martin) a documentary in 2 pieces” dives into his extraordinary story from two distinct points of view, with companion documentaries that feature never-before-seen footage and raw insights into Martin’s personal and professional trials and triumphs. “Then” chronicles Martin’s early struggles and meteoric rise to revolutionize stand-up before walking away at 35. “Now” focuses on the present day, with Martin in the golden years of his career, retracing the transformation that led to happiness in his art and personal life.
Daniel Fienberg for The Hollywood Reporter:
Neville’s approach, in the annoyingly titled documentary that I will henceforth only call STEVE!, is to bifurcate Martin’s life.
The 98-minute “Then” looks at the origins of Martin’s comic style — a pastiche of classic vaudevillian traditions with a ’70s-specific deconstructive approach — and traces the circuitous road to unprecedented success on-stage. Then, Martin walked away from stand-up.
The 95-minute “Now” looks at Martin’s life, well, now. It follows his post-stand-up career and his personal maturation, examining Martin as a movie star, husband and father, as a humorist and an art collector, plus his return to the stage as part of a beloved comic duo with Martin Short.
Together, the two films in STEVE! handle that task of image reconciliation in a way that sometimes validates Neville’s approach, but in their separateness comes the great frustration of this ambitious project. “Then” isn’t very good and “Now” feels mostly like a very sweet and generally appealing denouement and not a story in and of itself. So “Now” doesn’t work to its fullest without “Then,” and “Then” probably doesn’t work at all without “Now.”
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MacDailyNews Take: If you’re even remotely a fan of Steve Martin, this is a must-watch documentary regardless of the dichotomy angle (which, after all, you might like, as opposed to Fienberg, obviously). Watch STEVE! for the archival footage, Martin Short et al., and all of the little tidbits revealed within.
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