Impressively mean-spirited quasi-After Hours matricide comedy that pushes the boundaries of what could (and should) be considered humorous by actively provoking the audience to the point of nausea — so brazen in its depiction of, well literally everything, that it's simultaneously pretty easy to understand why it's fallen by the wayside, but also kinda incomprehensible as to why this hasn't had some sort of cult resurgence.
There's a certain sequence halfway through Where's Poppa? that genuinely left me speechless, and then Carl Reiner and Robert Klane had the gall to pile on one more gag involving a bouquet of flowers that, unfortunately, made me lose my shit. I've seen a lot of tasteless shit, but I've never felt worse laughing at a joke than I have at this. There's an evil within me...
I don't know if I'd say this is the common ancestor of Todd Solondz's work — this isn't exactly the subdued, psychologically uncomfortable comedy of Welcome to the Dollhouse or Happiness — but there aren't that many filmmakers out there that have tried to tackle the topics presented here in Where's Poppa? with as much provocative drollery as Solondz at his best. And to think, the Hays Code had only collapsed just 2 years prior. The American moviegoing audience of 1970 were simply not prepared for this level of audaciousness yet.
Impressively mean-spirited quasi-After Hours matricide comedy that pushes the boundaries of what could (and should) be considered humorous by actively provoking the audience to the point of nausea — so brazen in its depiction of, well literally everything, that it's simultaneously pretty easy to understand why it's fallen by the wayside, but also kinda incomprehensible as to why this hasn't had some sort of cult resurgence.
There's a certain sequence halfway through Where's Poppa? that genuinely left me speechless, and then Carl Reiner and Robert Klane had the gall to pile on one more gag involving a bouquet of flowers that, unfortunately, made me lose my shit. I've seen a lot of tasteless shit, but I've never felt worse laughing at a joke than I have at this. There's an evil within me...
I don't know if I'd say this is the common ancestor of Todd Solondz's work — this isn't exactly the subdued, psychologically uncomfortable comedy of Welcome to the Dollhouse or Happiness — but there aren't that many filmmakers out there that have tried to tackle the topics presented here in Where's Poppa? with as much provocative drollery as Solondz at his best. And to think, the Hays Code had only collapsed just 2 years prior. The American moviegoing audience of 1970 were simply not prepared for this level of audaciousness yet.
