Steve! (Martin): A Documentary in 2 Pieces

There’s not just one Steve Martin. If one visited Disneyland or attended a Boy Scouts troop meeting in the Los Angeles suburbs in the early 1960s, they might have met Steve Martin, teen magician. Bought a ticket for just about any major touring act or Vegas residency in the late ’60s? One may remember a head-scratching opening act from Steve Martin, performance artist. For the bulk of the ’70s, it was Steve Martin, world-renowned stand-up comedian. Then, during the ’80s and ’90s, Steve Martin, movie star. Younger folks know the man as the patriarch of numerous family films. Recent converts recognize him as one of the three leads of a hit streaming sitcom. “Multi-hyphenate” can’t even begin to encapsulate a decades-spanning career trajectory such as this. Morgan Neville’s latest, Steve! (Martin), attempts to contain all these multitudes — and, although it needs two feature-length films to get the job done, it mostly succeeds.

Subtitled A Documentary in 2 Pieces, Part 1 — or should that read Piece 1? — is dubbed “Then.” Beginning with Martin’s little-discussed childhood in the late 1940s and ’50s, the film relies purely on archival footage and voiceover narration to tell the story of a boy who was fascinated with the art of entertaining. From mind-bending magic shows to cheery Disneyland cast members, Martin found himself drawn to the world of live showmanship. Landing a job at the newly opened Disney theme park in Anaheim in the mid-’50s, teenage Martin made the first steps toward his future in show business by becoming a joke-cracking, trick-performing salesman (sales-kid?) in the park’s magic shop. From there, Martin’s star continued to rise and rise. Told mainly through the subject’s own inimitable words, Steve! (Martin): “Then” follows his whirlwind stand-up success all the way to the top. (Or, at least to 1980.)

It’s surprisingly enlightening. All too often, A-list documentary subjects prefer to shy away from the really engaging stuff in favor of what typically amounts to an audiovisual interpretation of their Wikipedia page. Perhaps it’s because Neville has personally helmed more than a dozen of these biodocs over the past quarter-century (and had a hand in producing countless more), but the director facilitates a deeper dive into his multifaceted subject’s foundational years than even the biggest fans have likely experienced before. From long-unresolved problems with his father to deep-seated feelings of loneliness that permeated his work — not to mention heaps of rare footage from his legendary act when it was very much still being workshopped — Piece 1 is a frequently inspiring (if occasionally plodding) glimpse at the way a singular talent forged his own path to fame.

Piece 2, “Now,” picks up where the first left off: Martin has just abandoned stand-up to pursue film. Fueled by the smash hit that was his Saturday Night Live hosting gig, his record-breaking comedy album sales, and his nationwide arena tour, the comedian — fresh off his feature debut, The Jerk (1979) — sees an opportunity to mix things up in a major way. Neville drops the archival approach for something more commonplace in celeb-looks-back-from-their-golden-years documentaries of late: current-day slice-of-life footage paired with famous talking heads and a loose chronological progression through the subject’s career. As “Then” did with the first half of his life, “Now” shines a light on some of the less commonly known aspects of the last 40 years of Martin’s personal and professional highlights. (Most of which has been kept quiet until now.)

Steve! (Martin)’s second half is a significant departure from the first. For those uninterested in topics such as the logic of comedy or the art of a good joke, Piece 2 delivers a far more traditional experience on par with Neville’s usual output. Viewers are treated to clips from Martin’s daily life, behind-the-scenes material of his touring act with frequent collaborator Martin Short, snippets from his most iconic roles, and interviews with huge names in the biz. Neville has been doing this for so long, it’s not outlandish to say he’s on autopilot here. That’s not a dig, per se — especially if one particularly enjoys his other works, such as the Mr. Rogers doc Won’t You Be My Neighbor? (2018) or the Oscar-winning 20 Feet from Stardom (2013). It’s meant more as a clarification: It might brandish Martin’s name in its title, but this is very much a Morgan Neville film (for better and for worse).

From his earliest years doing avant-garde stage comedy to his recent credits across page and screen, Steve Martin has never been what one could label conventional. He’s a one-of-a-kind celebrity, constantly reinventing what audiences know him for — from joking with a crowd to penning scripts to collecting priceless artwork to recording bluegrass albums to writing novels to becoming a father and everything else along the way. It’s a bit of a bummer, then, that Neville — one of the most blatantly unadventurous documentarians in the game — would be the one to make Martin’s definitive filmic biography. It’s highly informative, competently made, and extremely watchable, but nevertheless: Even considering its cartoon interludes, private-home-video segments, candid confessionals, and two-piece gimmick, Steve! (Martin) is the safest look possible at a generational superstar who has always played it anything but.