Is there anything worse than a comedy with no laughs?  You bet there is – a comedy with no laughs and a screeching, self-absorbed lead character that has an autistic kid and dies of cancer.  Actually, that description makes it sound kind of interesting.  It’s not.  It’s Isn’t She Great – the horrible story of actress-turned-best-selling-novelist Jacqueline Susann.

Susann (played here by Bette Midler, That Old Feeling), a self-proclaimed “star of stage and screen” found her career sagging as low as Midler’s bust in the mid ‘60s.  The film shows her tossed off of a game show called “What’s My Job?” for ridiculing a dimwitted co-panelist.  The business has already chewed her up and spit her out, and the past-her-prime starlet gets by on residual checks.  Her publicist Irving Mansfield (Nathan Lane, Mouse Hunt) proposes to her, marries her and, through one of the stranger screen scenes I can remember, sees a woman enjoying a book in Central Park, which gives him the idea to prod Susann into writing a novel about the “real” Hollywood.  The dirtier, the better.

The book, of course, is “The Valley of the Dolls,” which went on to become the best-selling novel of its time.  Susann went on to write two other stories, “The Love Machine” and “Once is Not Enough” (the latter should have been the title of the last Bond film), but the film doesn’t mention either.  Instead, it concentrates on Susann and Mansfield trying to find a publisher and an audience for her tawdry wares.  They practically invented the idea of a promotional book tour, hocking the novel from the trunk of their car as they barnstormed every local bookstore from Pismal Beach to Walla Walla, Washington.

But Susann is more than a groundbreaking sales entrepreneur.  Her character is perhaps one of the most annoying of all-time and I can’t recall a less sympathetic lead in the annals of Tinseltown.  She makes Tom Ripley seem like goddamn Rocky Balboa, and if Susann were a figure skater, she would have hired someone to whack Nancy Kerrigan in the knee.  She was a fame addict and actually had the audacity to demand that God make her more popular.  Truman Capote (portrayed eerily well by Sam Street) claimed that Susann looked like “a truck driver in drag.”  He later issued an apology…to truck drivers.  Midler is perfect casting, and so is the limp-wristed Lane.  Even Great’s press kit calls their relationship “unconventional.”

There’s some tragedy, too.  Susann and Mansfield have the autistic kid (this is what happens when a queen and a horse-faced diva try to populate the earth).  And she gets breast cancer, just as God relented to her constant yammering about her need for “mass love.”  While the inclusion of these misfortunes attempt to soften Susann’s brash character, they just don’t.  The script could have used some punch-ups, like the rumors that Susann was a bisexual (and bedded, among others, Ethel Merman, Coco Chanel and, I think, Mr. Ed).  Incredibly, Susann was also invited to the party at Roman Polanski’s house the night that Chuck Manson’s kids wiped out Sharon Tate, et al. (Tate appeared in the theatrical version of Dolls, but Susann missed it because of her chemo treatments.)  Either of these developments would have made the film a little more interesting.  And it’s not like there wasn’t enough time, with Great clocking in under an hour-and-a-half.

Great was directed by Andrew Bergman (Striptease) and the sorry script was based on Michael Korda’s New Yorker magazine article “Wasn’t She Great” (Korda was a Simon and Schuster editor on Susann’s second novel) and adapted by In & Out’s Paul Rudnick (a.k.a. Libby Gelman-Waxner).  Midler is awful, Lane seems content to hide behind her wide hips, and David Hyde Pierce (Frasier) offers further proof that he and Neil Patrick Harris are actually the same person. 

While Susann was probably a bit ahead of her time, Great is a bad comedy that refuses to end.  The best part was watching the book binded in the factory.  The second-best part?  When it was over.  The creators of the film insist that Great is only “loosely based” on Susann’s life, which is comforting.  I feel safer thinking that a person this horrible didn’t exist in the world.

1:29 - for adult language