Steve Martin: un documentaire en 2 parties

This doco is like Steve's comedy. It's a beautiful, fascinating story about how Steve became who he is today. I'm amazed by his struggles as a performer in the early days and how resilient he was to continue on. Above all, I appreciate how wholesome and uplifting this was... a little like Steve's humour. He doesn't need to dive in to dark places, insult people or get too political. Neither does this doco. I would only recommend this to those who are Steve Martin fans, would like a bit of nostalgia and an insight into who he is. Watching this brought back those feelings of simpler times. I miss those days.

Beautiful documentary. It is filled with kindness. Very few people I love and respect as Steve Martin, he is in the company of Tom Hanks, Jeff Goldblum, Conan O'Brien...His life story is both a hardship and a triumph of man. There is wisdom in the film, about work, family, friendship, love. I learned about him so much from it for which I am grateful. I read the other comments on it, some find it boring or just simply bad, I should learn from Steve Martin and should not say bad things about others, I just wish they watched a marvel action movie instead if they wanted a lot of action. I cannot understand how could they not find treasure upon treasure in this. I hope Martin Short will live as long as, at least as, Steve Martin will, I wouldn't want a world where he stops creating. This is not a perfect film but it is for me. Thank you for making it.

I found the first part of the docuseries real inspiring, hilarious and a great look into the grit and discipline of Steve Martin. It was a great look into his genius. I thought the first episode was very compelling engaging and well strewn together.

I found the second episode to be really sweet, you got to know the man behind the mystery. Some great themes were thrown out there into the void. Loneliness. Dealing with failure. Love and marriage. Community. Friendship. Unfortunately none of them were too deeply explored. Left the second part feeling pretty aimless in my opinion. They were just randomly, briefly spoken of. I found myself getting pretty distracted while watching it. It was edited really poorly in my opinion. Lacked any sort of narrative flow.

Other than enjoying Steve Martin's performances in a few iconic film roles, I knew relatively nothing about the man coming into this documentary-especially as it related to his stand-up comedy career. While "Steve!" certainly filled in a lot of those gaps, I found it to be "just okay" as a three-hour viewing experience in large part because I found one episode to be pretty clearly superior to the other.

The first episode focuses almost exclusively on Martin's childhood and then ascent in the magic/comedy realms-to the point of becoming one of the most popular stand-up performers in the history of the medium. I had absolutely no idea that he had hit those heights and was truly a cultural phenomenon. I really enjoyed this installment and its ending understandably teased a transition to examining Martin's film roles and present-day life.

While that second episode does ostensibly do those things, it does so from a very scattered perspective. Instead of the linear path of its predecessor, episode two is scattered. Martin's film career really isn't the focus-rather the result of reflections from his creation of a comic/sketch book of his life with an illustrator and just ramblings around Los Angeles with buddy Martin Short. There are certainly some stand-out nuggets in this installment (like Martin's newfound family life), but it meanders to the point of potentially being boring to some viewers. Unless you have a vested interest in Martin & Short sitting around swapping cringe-worthy punchlines, this hour-and-a-half might fall a little flat.

Overall, then, I settle on a solid-but-not-spectacular 7/10 star rating for "Steve!" as a whole. Parts of it really struck a chord with me and filled in Martin's "cultural gaps"; other parts were simply too slow and inane for me to identify with.

I enjoyed this 2 part doc on Apple TV+. I had generally forgotten about Steve Martin in recent decades after having watched most of his 1980s movie output as a teenager.

Part 1 went into his childhood and early career in standup ending as his massive fame as a standup peaked in 1980.

Part 2 focussed on his pivot to movies and then catches up with his life since then focussing on his interests in fine art, his marriage and fatherhood, and recent work with Martin Short. Much of the latter episode is Steve and Martin working on current material in their joint show.

Some very touching moments as he tries to reconcile with his distant and cold father - the difficult relationship that seems to have defined his persona. Also as he reads a passage from Planes, Trains and Automobiles and remembers the late John Candy. Many great contributions throughout from people who worked with Steve over the years - commenting on his talent, his detachment, his personal struggles. Overall a thoughtful piece of work and a nostalgic one as I recalled having recited so many of his jokes from late 70s/ early 80s.