Nora Ephron was one of the funniest women of her generation. Responsible for some of the silver screen’s brightest and funniest films, Ephron often wrote sophisticated comedies set in New York City. They’re often sparkling and sophisticated. Her 1992 film This Is My Life is a bit of a departure from her usual work. Though it’s set in New York City, the film centers on working class characters. In this case, it’s Dottie Ingels (Julie Kavner), a cosmetics counter saleswoman who is also an aspiring stand-up comic. The film then follows Dottie’s journey as she slowly establishes her career and becomes a famous star, leaving her two young daughters behind.
When we first meet Dottie, she’s using her shtick to sell makeup at her department store job. With her friends (including a pre-View Joy Behar who periodically popped up in films as a the friend), Dottie entertains a group of shoppers with patter. But in the evenings, she haunts nightclubs, hoping to get her big break.
Ephron’s script – though funny – isn’t inventive or innovative. She dips into A Star Is Born territory, plucking some tropes from the rags-to-riches tale, and sprinkles the script with the wise-beyond-their-years children. Ephron wrote the script with sister, Delia (an accomplished writer in her own right), from a novel by Meg Wolitzer. The story has Dottie move swiftly in her career, leaving her children behind. We also see Dottie as being more of a friend to her daughters – something films do to single parents, especially creative types. She’s not a disciplinarian and her children are often tasked with being emotional adults.
Because This Is My Life is set in the world of stand-up comedy, there are moments when we see Dottie on stage. It’s a strange thing when films depict stand-up comedy – it feels like these movies never get it right. Film critic extraordinaire Kyle Turner wrote a fantastic article about this question, “Why Does Stand-Up Comedy in Movies Always Suck?’ This Is My Life is no exception. The stand-up routines feel strangely airless and hacky, which is surprising given that it’s Nora Ephron’s word and Julie Kavner’s delivery – two funny ladies, so it’s a bit of a headscratcher that the stand-up bits don’t work. Turner raises some excellent points about why stand-up doesn’t translate to fictional narrative.
But because this is Nora Ephron film, there’s a lot to praise and recommend. The main attraction is Julie Kavner, a comedienne that most audiences will know from her work as Brenda on the 70s sitcom Rhoda or as Marge Simpson on the long-running The Simpsons. Kavner, the perennial sidekick, has rarely been given the chance to carry a project on her own, and she does a good job. She’s obviously very funny, though as mentioned before, the stand-up bits tend to fail her a bit (she’s far stronger when off stage). Part of Kavner’s charm is her delivery – she sounds aggrieved and slightly fed up, with her nasal honk of a voice.
As her children, Gaby Hoffman and Samantha Mathis take on a lot of the heavy lifting of the film. The script has them alternately raging against their mother’s success and resenting it. Hoffman is primarily known now for her superb work on Transparent, but in the early 1990s, she was a much-sought after child star, displaying a talent and a comic talent that belies her early age. Mathis and Hoffman do some good work and avoid being cloying and overly cute.
The rest of the cast is sprinkled with comic greats like Dan Aykroyd, Carrie Fisher, Kathy Najimy, Estelle Harris. And Ephron captures the working class side of New York reasonably well – she’s definitely more comfortable with middle class NYC, but she manages to show this side with little condescension.
When it was released, This Is My Life didn’t do well, either critically or commercially. It’s not a perfect movie and Ephron would go on to better things (Sleepless in Seattle, You’ve Got Mail, Julie & Julia), but it’s underrated and deserves a second look.
A Seat in the Aisle 
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