“Super Bob Einstein Movie” is a Hilarious, Uplifting Documentary

A new HBO documentary about the late Bob Einstein is a fantastic crash course through his career as a master of deadpan and physical comedy. It’s not mopey nor is it much of a memorial piece about a life cut too short—it’s a funny 75-minute tribute to the comedian.

“The Super Bob Einstein Movie” features memories and interviews with Einstein’s brother Albert Brooks, as well as David Letterman, Jerry Seinfeld, Sarah Silverman, Jimmy Kimmel and many other comedy royals.

Although Einstein passed away in 2019 at the age of 76 from cancer, he worked nearly right up until the end. His most recent well-known role was as the recurring character Marty Funkhouser on seasons four through nine of “Curb Your Enthusiasm.”

During Einstein’s later years, he also befriended filmmaker Danny Gold (“Vice News”). Gold decided to make the documentary as a pandemic project to capture the life and career of his late friend—but in a way that he hopes Einstein would have been proud of.

“I really wanted to capture his spirit, the way he was, sort of the kind of irreverent edgy, deadpan person,” Gold told the Journal. “I wanted to bring that spirit into the movie. And then in interviewing all the great people in the movie, these are great comedic minds—it became self-evident their admiration for his comedy.”

The documentary starts the viewer from Einstein’s early life as a showbiz kid in Beverly Hills, with his brothers Cliff and Albert, along with their comedian father and singer mother. 

It then dives into Einstein’s first foray onto TV in 1967, to his many appearances on “The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour.” Much of the documentary, however, showcases the best of Einstein’s character “Super Dave Osborne”—the accident-prone Evel Knievel-spoof stuntman with deadpan confidence. He became a fixture on the late night talk show circuit with many appearances as Super Dave from Johnny Carson, to David Letterman and Jimmy Kimmel.

“I dare you to find a better deadpan person than Bob,” Gold said. “His whole style, when he would go on Letterman or Kimmel or Carson, and he would sit there with the longest wind up, the longest setup to a very funny punchline, but he had the power, he controlled it.”

Viewers of the documentary will find themselves not just laughing at Einstein’s antics and punchlines, but laughing with the interviewees on screen. You get to laugh with Steve Martin, Larry David, Susie Essman and many others watching an Einstein/Super Dave clip and react to it contemporaneously in the moment. It’s not just them recalling memories to the camera, it’s them reliving the memories on the spot.

Gold emphasizes that “Bob was always about the funny” and describes the film as not a documentary but a “movie that was funny with documentary overtones.”

A summation of Bob’s career can’t be done on paper, you have to see it to feel the genuine hilarity. It’s difficult to convey how side-splitting it is to see Einstein stare bullets through Jerry Seinfeld while they’re getting coffee, or witness Super Dave sitting atop a car that’s a little too tall for entering a vehicular tunnel —no verbal or written description can do justice to Einstein’s brilliance.  

A summation of Bob’s career can’t be done on paper, you have to see it to feel the genuine hilarity.

“Being a comedian and not trying to be funny is a very special gift,” Jerry Seinfeld says in the film. Many times, it seems as if the comedians are riffing with their memories of Einstein.

“I think he’d get a kick out of knowing that I have to sit here and do this, knowing that I really don’t want to,” Larry David says in the film about giving a testimonial.

The film also shows how Einstein brought comedy into his life when the camera wasn’t rolling: vulgar with his comedy pals, insistent with producers, and affectionate to his family as a husband, brother, father and grandfather. The most touching parts of the film were the testimonials of his grandchildren.

“We called him Papa Super because he was ‘Super Dave Osborne’ and we thought he was always like a superhero!” Einstein’s granddaughter Zoe Dale recalled. “There was always a funny aspect to life when you were with him…there was always a way to make the day better, there was always a joke that could brighten our days.”

“The Super Bob Einstein Movie” can be streamed on HBO Max.