American: The Bill Hicks Story

Bill Hicks, who died of cancer in 1994 at the age of 32, was a stand-up comedian from a suburban, middle-class southern Baptist background. Hooked on performance from the age of 13, he evolved into a serious critic of American society. Hicks belonged to the mumbling, dragged-from-the-guts style of expressive, stream-of-consciousness comedy that developed from Lenny Bruce in the late 1950s, rather than the wisecracking, sardonic form of commentary associated with Bruce's contemporary, Mort Sahl. Frankly, I always preferred Sahl to Bruce and I find Hicks more interesting than entertaining. This movie is well assembled, but oddly muffled, and should be supplemented by the book Love All the People: Letters, Lyrics, Routines: Bill Hicks , which has an excellent foreword by John Lahr.