Group Therapy Falls Short of Its Compelling Premise
Image Courtesy of Hartbeat
The premise of Group Therapy is a good one: gather a group of stand-up comedians to discuss their varied experiences with mental health and its relationship to their work. Find a comically-minded A-lister to facilitate the conversation before a live audience: Neil Patrick Harris. And select as participants a diverse group of comics, including seasoned vets and relative newcomers: Mike Birbiglia, Nicole Byer, Gary Gulman, London Hughes, Tig Notaro and Atsuko Okatsuka.
At times, Group Therapy lives up to the premise. This is in no small part due to the cast that director Neil Berkeley (whose past work includes the 2017 doc on the stand-up legend, Gilbert) and co-producer Kevin Hart have assembled. Yet most of the film leaves viewers wanting more. Group Therapy takes a spoke and wheel approach that leaves little room for depth. Just as the film gives space to one of the comics’ personal narratives, it moves on to the next.
At the center of the film is the group conversation facilitated by Harris. From there, it dips in and out of the personal lives of the comics. Gulman candidly discusses his severe, life-long depression. Okatsuka details her mother’s schizophrenia and own reluctance to seek therapy. Byer shares her ADHD diagnosis and the racism and fatphobia she has encountered in her career. Hughes talks about the structural racism of the business and how it fed her own insecurities as a performer. Birbiglia opens up about his own years of therapy, and shares stories about losing friends in comedy to addiction.
The most familiar story may be Notaro’s, who starred in an eponymous 2015 Netflix doc that detailed her diagnosis with breast cancer, struggles to have a child, and the loss of her mother. Through no fault of her own, the time spent on the story brings an unbalanced feel to this film. With a plethora of archival footage thanks to the previous doc and, of course, Notaro’s own work, including Live, her 2014 album, Group Therapy gives its audience the compelling, cliff notes version of that story at the expense of the other, less-known voices.