It’s been pretty widely accepted and understood that stand up comedy can be a sort of talking therapy to those who practice it.
Richard Pryor to Robin Williams, Richard Lewis to Tig Notaro, a lot of performers have taken to the stage to air their personal issues and find laughs in deeper, darker places than the standard “D’ja ever notice?” shtick.
“Group Therapy” is a documentary that taps into that undercurrent in stand-up, a film that gathers half a dozen stand-ups for a chat with Neil Patrick Harris, who isn’t a therapist, doctor or medical professional, but who has played versions of those professions on film and TV.
We see bits of the on-stage acts of Nicole Byer, Mike Birbiglia and Notaro, hear them talk about therapy and mental health issues and crises they or members of their family have faced in confessional moments of “sharing.”
Cute, sweet and slight, the film has stand-ups talk in the language of self-help speak, quoting everybody from Mark Twain to Oprah, reveal the way they came to talk about their struggles on stage and talk about how that’s helped them.
“There has never been a better time to be mentally ill,” depressed, successful and funny 50something Gary Gulman jokes. And he’s right.
If nothing else, society has become more accepting of talking about such problems, post-Oprah. When Notaro, battling a break-up, the loss of her mother, a deadly illness and then a more deadly cancer diagnosis, rebuilt her deadpan act around that in 2012, it made her famous and made her fortune.
Japanese-American Atsuko Okasuka is revealed to be the only comic in this group — Harris included — not in therapy, she takes in everything all of the others have gotten out of “seeing somebody.” When we sample her family’s troubled history, we appreciate what she’s dealing with without a therapist.
Much of the film is standard-issue “stand up special biographical background” in nature — growing up Black and funny and female in Britain (London Hughes), a jock who couldn’t handle the depression of losing the one thing that was “exceptional” about him at 19 (Gulman) or finding the funny in leaning into “fat” (Byer).
“Group Therapy” doesn’t reinvent the “revealing” profile of comedians documentary. But it’s a novel approach to having performers talk about themselves, those who pursued the work, lifestyle and “sharing” until it killed them (Mitch Hedburg is mentioned, Richard Jeni and generations of others are not), and those for whom therapy — onstage and off — has helped and make happier, or at least a lot better adjusted than they once were.
Rating: unrated, adult subject matter
Cast: Neil Patrick Harris, Tig Notaro, Atsuko Okatsuka, Gary Gulman, Nicole Byer, Mike Birbiglia and London Hughes.
Credits: Directed by Neil Berkeley. A Hartbeat release.
Running time: 1:27
