When comedians suddenly can act

When comedians suddenly can act I can't help but feeling proud. Kinda dumb, yeah.

Three revelations for me come to mind:
Sasha Baron Cohen in Alice Through the Looking Glass. (I haven't seen something like Les Miserables, that features him.) Cohen's characters Ali G., Bruno and Borat were brilliant, but always felt like parody as well as versions of himself. In this Alice movie Cohen really acts, well.

Ray Romano in Vinyl. I never really watched Everybody Loves Raymond, except maybe I kinda did: I know the brother character is pretty funny and his wife is a hot housewife. I mostly never understood why it was a vehicle for this Ray Romano guy, was it like Seinfeld, but with a better acting comedian?

In season 1, episode 6, Cyclone, there's a great, great scene, at Ray's character's son's bar mitswa, which Romano carries with beautiful and silent acting. And he's great in the whole series.

I don't really like Vinyl and Scorseses signature glorification of bombastic, selfish shitheads, but at least in this series the shithead is supported by realistic characters like Ramano's.

Last honorable mention is Julia Louis-Dreyfus, as vice-president, in Veep.  I value humour greatly, also as an art, but don't give enough credit to comedy actors. Louis-Dreyfus makes a lot of the jokes in Veep work with pretty subtle and good acting.

Like Romano, she works particularly well in this series. I think Veep is probably the best series about politics. Politics is pretty absurd and so best portrayed in a comedy like this.

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