This is a cult classic sketch comedy film that, while it
doesn’t hold up extremely well, famously had an influence on Saturday Night Live, The Kentucky Fried Movie and other such
things. I don’t know whatever happened
to Shapiro except that he seems to have fallen off the radar after the failure
of his subsequent feature Modern Problems
(1981), but he is very funny as he stars in a majority of the clips in The Groove Tube. Richard Belzer and Chevy Chase also appear. Not much in it is real genius, but it’s very
easy to imagine pot-addled late-night audiences of the day doubled over with
laughter at the barrage of shamelessly low-brow gags. Nudity and references to drugs and
homosexuality were probably revolutionary – as they were in John Waters’ films
of the same period – when used as material for comedy rather than sober
dramatic exposé. My favorite bit is the least controversial
but the most surreal; Shapiro minces through the streets of Manhattan singing
the standard “Just You, Just Me” to startled and amused passersby, some of whom
join in. Woody Allen’s Everyone Says ‘I Love You’ opens just
the same way, but I don’t know if he was referencing The Groove Tube or if it’s just a coincidence.
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