Stand-up — one comic in front of a microphone — is the default setting for live comedy in the United States. In Japan the equivalent has long been rakugo, a traditional form in which a single performer tells comic stories. Today, however, aspiring comics usually opt for manzai, a style of duo comedy featuring a straight man (tsukkomi) and a fool (boke).
Based on comedian Naoki Matayoshi's award-winning 2015 novel that inspired a 10-part Netflix series, "Spark" tells the story of two no-name manzai comics over a 10-year period. Directed by comic Itsuji Itao and produced by Yoshimoto Kogyo — an Osaka-based talent agency that specializes in manzai — the film is not the usual zero-to-hero heart-warmer, one of the many the local industry churns out like clockwork.
Instead it's an instructive, if discursive, object lesson on the harsh realities of the comics' trade, in which only a handful of manzai acts ever make it to show-biz heaven: Lucrative regular gigs on prime-time television. So "Spark" is something of an anti-manzai-recruiting film, not that it's likely to discourage the thousands, from amateurs to seasoned pros, trying to break into the big time. But it's also insightful into why they keep at it, against all odds.