Robert De Niro is Jackie Burke, an angry, uncompromising insult comic several decades past his prime-time fame on a popular sitcom. Doing stand up on Nostalgia Night at a comedy club, he assaults a heckler who records the fight for his web podcast, and ends up behind bars for a month when he refuses to apologize. While serving out his sentence doing community service at a food bank, he meets Harmony (a terrific turn from Leslie Mann) a much younger soulmate with her own anger management issues. It's an encounter that will upend his life.

The Comedian has been a passion project of De Niro's for years, and he and director Taylor Hackford have assembled a dynamite cast to bring his vision to scathingly funny life: Danny DeVito as Jackie's deli-owning brother; Patti Lupone as the sister-in-law who loathes him; Harvey Keitel as Harmony's mobster father; Charles Grodin as a rival comic; Cloris Leachman as "a barely living legend" who gets the ultimate Friar's Club sendoff; and Edie Falco as Jackie's long suffering manager, well practiced in deflecting her client's bitterly funny, decidedly un-PC tirades. 

Taylor Hackford – Director