STEVE! (martin) a documentary in 2 pieces

One of the most impressively and creatively shot filmed biographies in recent memory.

There are few surprises, but this is a fascinating compare-and-contrast exercise between an innovative, anxious young man on the cusp of greatness, and the cultural icon he became.

If you don’t consider yourself the biggest Steve Martin fan or you need a refresher course on how he became the most popular comedian of the late 1970s, then by all means STREAM IT to the first episode, but everyone should make sure to watch the second part, which provides a much richer, fuller portrait of the comedian, actor, playwright, art collector, and in his later years, husband, father and comedy partner.

One of the benefits of streaming has been the appetite and latitude for such retrospectives, allowing artists to engage in expansive self-reflection. “STEVE!” feels like a particularly good use of that format, showcasing a personality everybody knows but, at least in his heyday, few really knew.

Making film about creativity is a losing proposition, ordinarily, but Mr. Neville comes dangerously close to positioning the artistic impulse on screen naked.

This is a thoroughly watchable, intimate and intelligent portrait, although Martin can still be cagey when it comes to family.

Generations of great and wildly successful stand-ups have followed him, but none seem to have achieved the shift in the culture Martin generated, even if some have equaled the standards of stand-up success he and to a lesser degree Richard Pryor established for what “making it” might look like, with or without “happiness” to go along with it.

What he [director Morgan Neville] captures here is a compelling dichotomy between the warmth and faux guilelessness of Martin’s persona as a comedian and his reticent personality.

The two films could have been combined into one tighter and more effective feature, but even as bifurcated and somewhat baggy as it is, “Steve!” is a smart and charming portrait of a smart and charming man who keeps it all willfully, unfashionably apolitical, and who carefully avoids talking trash about anyone other than himself.

The first half of “Steve!” becomes more about a career than a person, which left me feeling a little distant from the subject at its conclusion. And that’s what makes the second half, subtitled “Now,” a masterstroke on Neville’s part.

Nothing in the first episode quite prepares audiences for where Neville plans to take them in the follow-up. Sure, the roots of the unhappy dynamic with his dad are there, paying off Martin’s own late-life parenting efforts, but “Now” would likely move people just as well if screened by itself. It’s so different in form from “Then” that the films feel like separate answers to a single assignment, rather than two halves of a complete project. If anything, they’re disconnected pieces of a far larger puzzle.

It’s compelling in its much more amiable golden years second half, but did it truly need to be three-plus hours long? In that regard, it might be for hardcore Steven Martin disciples only and serves as an example of the streaming age excess where runtime limits are there for a good reason.

Both “Then” and “Now” go down smoothly enough to watch at home, but it’s only “Then” that captures a specific moment in American culture crucial for any young comedy nerds to learn about.

Martin’s graceful aging and ability to appreciate life more may be less of a yowza story than the meteoric rise that preceded it, but Now still has enough raw material to detail a hell of a second and third act. What we get instead, however, feels remarkably superficial.

“Then” and “Now” combine to give a fairly thorough look at Martin’s life. Yet various co-stars Martin’s worked with through the years sound the same theme: they don’t really know him, not well. I’m not sure by the end of “Steve!” viewers do, either. But for Martin fans, it’s a fascinating attempt to try.

What deeper access we’re given into the inner life of Steve Martin is debatable – his egg-poaching rituals are a pleasant touch, in a second (warmer) half that hunts for little but pleasant touches. Hanging out with him as he spitballs material, and makes Jerry Seinfeld inexplicably guffaw, is what happens after breakfast. It may all be a little too much of an average thing.