REVIEW: STEVE! (martin) a documentary in 2 pieces [2024]

Rating: TV-MA | Episodes: 2 | Runtime: 90 minutes
Release Date: March 29th, 2024 (USA)
Studio: Apple TV+
Director(s): Morgan Neville

I always thought, “This does not happen.” And then it did.

I’ve always been a big Steve Martin fan. The energy. The excitement. The facial expressions. And, perhaps most notably, the pathos. It shouldn’t come as a surprise to therefore discover the man behind the act was very often lonely. A theme that carries through both halves of Morgan Neville’s “STEVE! (martin): a documentary in 2 pieces”.

The first 90-minute episode is entitled “Then” and follows a lot of what Martin talks about in his great autobiography Born Standing Up. This is a familiar archival documentary with clips and anecdotes and still photography showing the stories being told by the voices in our ears. We never see an interviewee, just their names. Everything is Martin. His failures and successes being weighed and measured by his evolution as a personality and the world’s evolution as an audience who finally “got it.”

The second episode is “Now.” This one is done in a memoir documentary style of following Martin around present-day as he and his family/friends talk about his legacy. It touches on his film career (part one ends with his retirement from stand-up as The Jerk premieres to spark a new chapter of show business for him), but only as it relates to his psychology and current state of happiness as a husband and father. It’s vastly more personal, but also feels much more incomplete.

Neville tries to get there in the end with the notion of solitude and how protective Martin is of a personal life you don’t quite know exists because he’s so animated and open about his public life. I loved a talk show clip where he’s asked about his art collection and how quickly and severely he shuts it down. That’s a subject for him. We don’t get to share that. And hearing him acknowledge as much later when finally opening up his private collection with the admission that a family gave him something precious to take that art’s place, really says a lot about how he ticks.

As such, we’re always held a bit at arm’s length. Whereas his book only touches on what he wanted to express, this outsider lens ultimately tries to mine for more, albeit with varying success. That’s not to say Martin should be more forthcoming. I respect the heck out of any celebrity who is willing and able to keep something sacred for themselves. In the context of introducing these threads and scratching surfaces, however, it does feel like a lot is left on the table despite three-hours.

The whole is still entertaining and informative, though. It delivers enough to be worthwhile even if—like many of Apple’s documentaries—it’s really just a glorified puff piece trying to be as inoffensive and congratulatory as possible.