Marty, Life Is Short
by George Wolf
Remember when someone on social media tried to come at Martin Short, and it seemed like the entire internet rose up in protest?
That was awesome, because even if you don’t think Short is funny for some odd reason, he just seems like a peach of a human being.
The Netflix doc Marty, Life Is Short confirms that peachiness, for just about every one of its 99 minutes. Full of home movies, TV and movie clips, interviews with family, famous friends, and a few new thoughts from Short himself, the film reveals him as a kind soul committed to fighting pain by spreading laughter.
And while Short insists that, as opposed to the well worn comic stereotype, his humor was not born from pain, he has endured plenty of it.
“It came from my whole life,” he says.
Short lost his brother at age 12, his mother at 18, his father at 20, his beloved wife of thirty years, Nancy Dolman, in 2010, and his daughter Katherine just three months ago. And still, as Steve Martin tell us, if Marty says he’ll be at your dinner party and then he can’t come, “you cancel the party.”
Martin is just one of the many longtime friends and colleagues that director Lawrence Kasdan assembles to sing Short’s praises. From Speilberg to Hanks, from former SCTV co-stars Eugene Levy, Andrea Martin, and the late Catherine O’Hara to Short’s own siblings and beyond, all of the love feels warm and one hundred percent authentic. It’s often touching.
Clearly, Kasdan is also a longtime friend, which brings both pluses and minuses. He’s an Oscar-nominated director with no shortage of inside access to his subject, yes, but his closeness to Short also fuels the feeling that all the film’s edges have been safely dulled. Kasdan also asks some onscreen questions without being mic-ed up, which can be frustrating to follow.
Recent docs such as Steve! (Martin) and Pee-wee as Himself have shown how these types of biographies can transcend the standard playbook for a deeper, more resonant type of engagement. Marty, Life Is Short keeps the ranks more closed, leaning into a greatest hits presentation, a box set with extended liner notes.
It’s an entertaining, funny, and star-studded salute to a guy who’s pretty easy to like and who, in the words of Tom Hanks, “moves at the speed of joy.”
And, man wait ’til you see the footage of his A-list Christmas parties from back in the day. Epic!
