'Marty, Life Is Short' A Review

 Marty, Life Is Short is a documentary about actor/comedian Martin Short. Through talking head interviews, home videos, archival footage, and Short going about his day-to-day in the present his life and career are explored.

Like many of this particular brand of bio-doc there's not much depth here, more like a greatest-hits, which isn't bad or undeserved! Short is a singular talent with a long and eclectic career and it's fun and funny to revisit his characters and roles or discover some for the first time. But given his life includes quite a bit of untimely death and subsequently grief little time is really paid to that aspect aside from a platitude or two. Little time is given to how he actually created his characters or what is creative process is, one of the best sequences is him describing an SNL character, intercut with the sketch itself, inspired by a hyper-defensive make-up artist. Familial(and personal) substance use is clearly a pertinent topic(to what degree is certainly up for debate) but that is not addressed or really acknowledged.

The film is a sweet, relatively shallow, retrospective. Gives Short some much-deserved flowers, entertaining but thin.

Currently streaming on Netflix.

Stream It.