Manny Lewis is a feelgood comedy that leaves you feeling nothing

REVIEW: Comedian Carl Barron’s Manny Lewis is one of the most truly terrible Australian films in living memory — and this is why.

Manny Lewis (M)

Director: Anthony Mir (feature debut)

Starring: Carl Barron, Leanna Walsman, Roy Billing, Damian Garvey.

Rating : *1/2

Brace yourself for a Carl-crash

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Here comes one of the most truly terrible Australian films in living memory : an eerily inert (mis)guided tour of the spacious bemusement park that is the mind of comedian Carl Barron.

Playing a feebly fictionalised version of himself, Mr Barron has some urgent messages to convey about how challenging and complex life can be for a wildly popular stand-up comic in this country.

The fans just won’t leave Australia’s major mirth-maker Manny Lewis (Barron) alone.

All those back-slappers and mouth-breathers can be real pests sometimes. (Pssst! Carl! Aren’t these the same folk you’re hoping to sell movie tickets to this weekend?)

Furthermore, it is a total drag when people expect you to be funny all the time. Particularly when they always laugh like loons, whether you’re joking with them or not. (Don’t you get it, people? You’re just making this sad clown even sadder. Shame on you all!)

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Disappointing ... Carl Barron and Leeanna Walsman in a scene from Australian film Manny Lewis.

Meeting a woman who understands these challenges and complexities can be hard. Very, very hard.

Hard enough to keep a man like Manny up at night feeling even sorrier for himself in his swish Sydney high-rise apartment.

And should Manny ever meet a woman that might be the one, she’ll probably turn out to be living a secret life as a phone-sex worker (albeit one that he unknowingly happens to call every other evening).

Not so much a feature film as a therapy session where the star is acting as both patient and psychiatrist, Manny Lewis is a distinctly flat experience.

Even repeated attempts to play to Barron’s supposed strengths as a crowd-slaying live comic fail to right a sinking ship.

Therapy session ... Carl Barron and Leeanna Walsman in Manny Lewis.

Not only is the material weak by Barron’s own standards, the use of canned audience laughter to boost responses to pulseless punchlines reeks of desperation.

And did we really need not one, but two - yes, two! - singer-songwriterly musical interludes featuring Barron crooning a ballad while brandishing an acoustic axe?

No, we did not. A lot less of Roy Billing’s chin-jiggling windbaggery as Manny’s withdrawn, tough-love-dispensing dad would have been welcome, too.

And that Manny’s-girlfriend-is-a-secret-sex-line-operator sub-plot?

Strange plot ... Carl Barron in a scene from Manny Lewis

Let’s just say it might have stood a chance of being funny - and this is supposed to be a comedy, remember - if it turned out to be Manny’s old man that was doing dirty calls on the sly.

Barron gives acting as we know it a wide berth, opting instead to wistfully slouch from one scene to the next as if he’s advancing up a queue to pay a library fine.

As for the fight sequence where a malcontent Manny starts some biffo with a scruffy older (and possibly homeless) gentleman, there may not be anything stranger filmed in the name of comedy on these shores for a long time to come.

*** for more reviews, news and updates, follow Leigh Paatsch on Twitter at @leighpaatsch and on Instagram at leighpaatsch ***