If 'Misery Loves Comedy' is a stream-of-consciousness exploration of the world of comedy, then that consciousness belongs to Pollak.

| Original Score: 2.5/5 | Sep 16, 2021

Pollak only gets round to misery right at the end, in a quick-fire sequence of comedians either agreeing or disagreeing that you have to be miserable to be funny. By then, though, you'll probably have stopped caring.

| Original Score: 2/5 | Nov 21, 2017

[Kevin] Pollak isn't taking a solve-for-x approach here so much as simply geeking out with his fellow tribesmen (and a few -women), who may or may not be your favorite funny people, anyway.

| Aug 24, 2017

Because he packs the film as tightly as the star-studded The Aristocrats, none of these issues receive in-depth exploration, but it's more of a survey than a psychoanalytic exercise.

| Aug 21, 2017

It's a decent enough film for comedy buffs though there aren't a whole lot of surprises.

| Nov 11, 2015

Do you have to be sad to be funny? You'll have to sit through a slew of micro-anecdotes and shop talk before you get any answers from this choppy documentary - longer than any decent comic would defer a punchline.

| Original Score: 2/5 | Sep 17, 2015

If only he had probed a bit deeper, and widened his scope beyond the predominantly white, male subjects (including our own Rob Brydon, Steve Coogan and Stephen Merchant), this could have been a fascinating film as well as a funny one.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Sep 10, 2015

Overall, what we get is a relentless conveyer belt of talking heads, earnestly dissecting their profession.

| Original Score: 2/5 | Jun 25, 2015

If comedy is tragedy plus time, is stand-up comedy a kind of higher math used to survive that equation?

| Jun 21, 2015

With so many subjects, it's obvious the director is going for quantity, but it doesn't work (especially the scenes with Matthew Perry; a funny actor is much different from a professional stand-up). The overall tone feels scattered and self-important.

| Original Score: 2/4 | May 7, 2015

If you want to be a comedian, see this Kevin Pollak documentary first. However, although amusing and enlightening, it's also a bit scary and incoherent at times.

| May 4, 2015

We hear plenty of engaging anecdotes, though, taken together, they don't do much to illuminate a subject that has been thoroughly explored elsewhere ...

| Apr 30, 2015

Are they miserable? No; everyone seems to be having a great time. Are they funny? Um, not so much.

| Original Score: 2/4 | Apr 30, 2015

For the most part ... this is a pretty safe discussion about a very unsafe art form. We can only imagine what's in the outtakes.

| Original Score: 2/4 | Apr 30, 2015

There was a time when all this might have felt, if not revelatory, then perhaps not quite as exhausted as it does during this particular moment in popular culture.

| Apr 27, 2015

An evident labor of love and also a work of grating amateurism.

| Apr 23, 2015

Might have been a better movie if [director Kevin Pollak had] rejected some of the five-dozen funny (or not) people who volunteered.

| Apr 23, 2015

The niche it aims to fill has already been occupied by people willing to go much deeper than Pollak.

| Original Score: 2.5/5 | Apr 23, 2015

While genial and never dull, the film is all over the place, a classic example of trying to do and say too much.

| Original Score: 2.5/4 | Apr 23, 2015

While there's no single, monumental insight here-no a-ha moment that cracks the code of comedy-there are a ton of stories and opinions that comedy nerds should love.

| Original Score: B | Apr 23, 2015