MixedThe Observer (UK)There’s a priceless opening shtick about seeing Frankenstein as a boy ... The other childhood stuff is fairly mundane ... Brooks seems to have little self-awareness when it comes to his own behaviour ... Brooks was simply one of life’s \'wild beasts\', he says, but doesn’t look further into why certain clowns might have a touch of the sociopath, or just be a pain in the tuchus. He’s good at remembering where jokes came from...but heavy weather when recalling gags and routines ... This is a book that is constantly corpsing. He’s not so hot at theorising, either ... Not enough, alas, to make this an essential read. Among the minute recollections of each of his movies, there’s the odd morsel you may not have known ... this is not the most gratifying read. Go back to his best movies instead: they’re sometimes uncomfortably dated, in places as creaky as Brooks’s knees must be. But you’d have to be Hedy Lamarr not to find them funny.
