Albert Brooks, earlier in his career, may not have been the most appealing person in show business, but his screen persona was then certainly one of the funniest: insecure, obsessive, vain, and obnoxious enough to make his low-key, self-deprecating satires a definite acquired taste. In this mock cinema verité parody of a then topical PBS reality series he attempts to document on camera one year in the life of the second-most typical family in America (the runner-up was preferred in order to avoid a winter in Green Bay, Wisconsin). But the scientific enquiry meets with several unforeseen obstacles, not the least of which is a complete breakdown of the actuality Brooks wants so desperately to capture. Charles Grodin's typically deadpan performance sets the proper comic mood, and the scenario includes plenty of cinema in-jokes sure to raise a chuckle from any film student (it might have been titled 'Reel Life'). One highlight is the slow-motion family frolic meant to show highbrow French critics what the word 'montage' is all about.

This film has one funny sight gag - the camera men with their high-tech (for its time) helmet cams prowling the Yeager and Brooks households like voyeuristic aliens. And that's it. Otherwise, it is a static, flat satire that goes nowhere. I'm amazed to read some other comments describing Brooks' first film as "complex." It's consistently dumb and obvious and desperate - the "perfect" family is actually dysfunctional, the black academic is a prig who resents being racially stereotyped, the Hollywood producer only cares about making money not art, a gynecologist is actually a baby trader who was ambushed by "60 Minutes" (sounds funnier than it plays) -- and so on. Ha ha. At nearly every turn, Brooks sucks the humor out of every potentially humorous situation. He doesn't know how to pace in the longer format and the film feels horribly padded, as well. I sat there stone-faced for a little over an hour and a half waiting for the humor to kick in, charitably chuckling here or there.Of course with the explosion of reality programming over the last decade, one would think that this film was ahead of its time. But Brooks botches it by focusing more on himself and the totally unfunny scientific institute. We don't even meet the Yeagers until about a half hour into the picture. There is absolutely no need for the scientific institute in the film, and Brooks should have remained OFF camera, goading and cajoling the Yeagers into being more "real" from behind the scenes. That might have been funny. But what we get is Brooks moving into the house next door (not funny) and expecting what? This is where the movie makes no sense. Does he want conflict or the "perfect family" being perfect? Because when he gets conflict, he seems dissatisfied, and the institute reacts with grave concern that jeopardizes the entire project. But isn't that the whole point? Why would the institute even become involved unless they wanted to study the ups and downs and everyday struggles of a typical American family? The whole concept is half-baked and hopelessly confused.This film makes so many poor choices. Why would the studio send the Yeagers on a two-week trip to Hawaii? It's not funny and serves no purpose. The film within the film is supposed to be about the film-makers' callous intrusion into the Yeagers' life, not their generosity. Generosity isn't funny. When the Yeagers return, Brooks opts to give them an hour to themselves. Again, how is this funny? He should be right on top of them from the first moment and never let up. He shouldn't live in the house across the street, he should live IN the Yeagers' house. Time after time, Brooks shys away from where the laugh is. When the documentary finally starts filming, the wife complains of menstrual cramps at the dinner table (not funny) which triggers an unfunny argument with husband Charles Grodin, and we see that reality is messy, unpleasant. Might have been funny or interesting if the film had built to that moment, showing the Yeagers gradually breaking down under the constant scrutiny of their lives. But it happens with no build-up, no tension, no funny.Strangely, Brooks seems bored with the Yeager family. They never come into focus, particularly the children. The young son is given nothing to do and barely registers. The daughter gets one junior-high-school-drama queen scene, then is forgotten. The wife flirts with Brooks early on (not funny) but that's quickly dropped. Why would the wife possibly invite Brooks to film her visit to a gynecologist? Not funny. Might have been funny if she had let it slip she had an appointment with the gynecologist and Brooks had tailed her there and surprised her at the office. And Grodin, a very funny actor, is completely wasted in the bland role of the bland father trying to maintain his bland image.Brooks ill-advisedly makes himself the star, and he just isn't at the top of his game here. His neurotic ramblings don't have much bite, his character isn't sharply enough written, and his goals never become clear. I should have been tipped off in the first scene. Brooks is schmaltzily introducing himself and the institute representatives to the town. The black academic is uncomfortable in this setting and doesn't stand up when introduced. Brooks jokes that if the audience is wondering why he didn't stand it's because he "doesn't eat much." Huh? Oh, I guess I just don't get that complex Brooks humor.

In his most thorough feat of self-deprecation, Albert Brooks plays himself as a smarmy upstart Hollywood director charged with filming a real-life portrait of an "ordinary" Phoenix family to be financed by the Boulder Institute for Behavioral Science. Taking as its satirical subject the PBS series "An American Family", Real Life's opening text scroll includes an excerpt from a media critic that reads (paraphrasing), "This is a whole new method of anthropological research…as interpreted by the camera." It's the last part, "interpreted by the camera," that clearly interests Brooks. In detailing the crumbling of the family and the director's process of selecting what to shoot and how (it isn't long before he's staging scenes), Brooks shows how the mere presence of the camera shapes a new reality for spectator and subject. Their first dinner under camera (the technicians wear ridiculous astronaut-like helmet devices over the top halves of their bodies) has Charles Grodin trying to present his perfect family, but his stressed-out wife gives a hilariously blunt assessment of her feelings. (Meanwhile, Brooks wonders whether his leading man is coming across as unsympathetic.) The institute's naïve statisticians don't see the folly of their pursuit until Brooks makes the film his blatant vanity project; the comic highpoint is a montage of happy, slow-motion family moments that Brooks narrates ("I'll show the French what a montage really is!"). In this project, all are delusional, from the quixotic scientists who fatuously hired Hollywood talent for a film about reality to the unseen producer who makes money the inappropriate subject of every conversation. And film-making, like all profit-driven endeavors, is subject to self-interest, rendering futile the entire notion of the camera as objective recorder. But try telling that to a Hollywood producer.

This is, of course, a very funny film (it's Albert Brooks, after all). But it also shows the quantum uncertainty in "reality" television. By attempting to observe the experiment, the experiment is altered. Albert Brooks and his film crew follow the hapless family in "Real Life", dressed in bizarre helmet-cams. Charles Grodin, his wife and children can't help but be constantly aware that cameras are present, and this leads to all sorts of atypical behaviour.I mention CBS' reality shows in my summary because I remember seeing one of the Survivor contestants on "Politically Incorrect" claim that after a short while they forgot the cameras were on the island with them. What she couldn't grasp -- but Albert Brooks does -- was that while the cameras weren't foremost in their minds all the time, you can't help but be influenced by the peripheral knowledge that a big Betacam camera and mike boom are just a few feet from your so-called "reality".