So Robert De Niro Plays This Insane Knife Salesman. And There's This Super Star Ballplayer . . .

Rating: 3/10 (29 October 2015)

I just saw THE INTERN yesterday, and it really wasn't half bad. But the whole time I was watching Robert De Niro playing the sweet, kind intern, drying Anne Hathaway's tears and so on, I kept thinking about a movie called THE FAN.
THE FAN was meant to be a scorching suspense thriller, full of De Niro at his most menacing and insane. But really it came across as far more funny than THE INTERN. I mean, just think about the main character. He's "an insane knife salesman." That's a character we meet all the time in real life, of course. A traveling knife salesman. Who's insane.
De Niro traveling door to door, selling knives, is a funny idea by itself. De Niro telling delusional tales of "partying" with Mick Jagger is a really, really funny idea. Mick Jagger and De Niro in the same universe is funny, let alone in the same room. Partying together. Till dawn.
So then, because the story is so realistic so far, they add a bizarre fantasy element. This rich, black, baseball superstar somehow decides that he needs to befriend a small-time knife salesman who's clearly insane. Because that's what superstars do, see. They wander the land, befriending the insane.
And then they party till dawn.