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Nov 23, 2015Nursebob rated this title 4 out of 5 stars
Martin Scorsese takes aim at America’s obsession with celebrity and scores a direct hit in this funny and very mean-spirited satire. Although it starts out deceptively as just another wacky comedy you soon realize that Scorsese’s protagonists are actually a pair of narcissistic psychopaths with De Niro’s Pupkin a sitcom reincarnation of Travis Bickle. This revelation suddenly casts all those jokes and pratfalls in an uncomfortably sinister light as the true depth of Pupkin’s mania becomes apparent and, by association, the public’s unquenchable thirst for novelty and sensationalism (spurred on by a press eager to invent the next Big Thing). With its cruel cynicism and sense of the absurd, The King offers a few shivers to go with its laughs.