Tortured baseball analogies aside, IFC’s ‘Brockmire,’ starring the great Hank Azaria and Amanda Peet, delivers a surprisingly spry and funny indie comedy.
An IFC comedy. Starring Hank Azaria. And Amanda Peet. About baseball. On the surface, none of that screams instant smash. Perhaps out of the bullpen, Brockmire needs some time to build an audience and become the word-of-mouth hit it deserves to be. Like Schitt’s Creek before it, Brockmire throws together game actors with a slightly musty plot and breathes new life in it. And like Schitt’s Creek before it, it succeeds because it remembers exactly what a comedy needs to do to be successful – it’s very funny.
Hank Azaria stars as the title character: Jim Brockmire, a once-celebrated baseball announcer who suffers a legendary breakdown. His most famous outbursts, viewed millions of times online, capture his pain on being abandoned by his sexually adventurous wife. Flailing in a sex and drug-fueled haze, he returns to active duty thanks to Jules (Peet). Jules owns the Morristown Frackers, a very Minor League baseball team filled with far-past-their-prime players. Their best play requires the overweight men to sling their guts over home plate in hopes the pitcher hits them. It works more than it should – kind of like the show.
Azaria and Peet drive the series. Sure, he offers that trademark Azaria funny voice, but never forget his strong acting chops. Jim Brockmire is a complex character: oscillating between suicidal depression and the audacity of hope. Azaria delivers a fantastic performance, hitting home the necessary notes to elicit amounts of equal sympathy and resentment. Speaking of hope, Peet’s perma-optimism works very well as a foil to Azaria’s toxicity. Historically, Peet has been a criminally underrated actress, never having the chance to excel in a role worth her talents. Brockmire’s Jules gives her that role, and she’s as much of a home-run as Azaria.
Final Verdict
In the end, Brockmire works as a two-hander. Azaria exercised this character on Funny Or Die, so he comes to the game ready to play. And he’s really very, very good as is Peet, often going toe to toe. To grow into greatness, it needs a wider playing field of characters. There are supporting players (Tyrel Jackson Williams’ Charles the internet guy is the most prominent), but they mostly exist to react to Brockmire. Still, I’ll keep coming back because Azaria and Peet completely commit to the material, driving their characters far into indecency. This being IFC, that’s pretty damn far. The series becomes incredibly filthy after a minute. To me, that’s just icing on the cake.
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