Neal Israel
Israel is a comedy lifer whose name sits on a very particular strand of 1980s American comedy: Police Academy, Real Genius and Bachelor Party, films about institutions being overrun by the people they should never have admitted. He directed Bachelor Party in 1984, which is the purest and least apologetic of the three.
The more revealing thing the credits here show is a habit. Israel keeps putting himself into comedies, his own and other people's, in parts so small they read as signatures: Commuter #1 in Moving Violations, Singer #2 in the Fast Times series, Dr. Zillman in Johnny Dangerously, Mr. Ross in both Look Who's Talking pictures, Mr. Dunbar in Surf Ninjas, a doctor in It's Alive III, and, three decades on, Rabbi Steinsaltz in The Wedding Ringer. It is a comedy writer's version of a cameo, taken for the joke rather than the credit.
The later career moved to television and to children, where he directed episodes of Lizzie McGuire, Zeke and Luther, Dog with a Blog, The Fresh Beat Band and I Didn't Do It, alongside features like Combat Academy and The Brady Bunch in the White House. Nobody has called him an auteur, and that appears to suit him. He is a professional who kept comedy sets running for decades.
Movies (12)
- The Wedding Ringer (2015)
- Bachelor Party (1984)
- Look Who's Talking (1989)
- Look Who's Talking Too (1990)
- Moving Violations (1985)
- Moving Violations (1985)
- It's Alive III: Island of the Alive (1987)
- Surf Ninjas (1993)
- Surf Ninjas (1993)
- The Brady Bunch in the White House (2002)
- Johnny Dangerously (1984)
- Combat Academy (1986)
TV (1)
Where to start with Neal Israel
Bachelor Party is the one to watch, and it is funnier than its reputation: an eighties comedy with a nasty streak and a lead performance running at a completely different speed from the material around it.
After that, the honest route through this list is a spotting game. Johnny Dangerously is the best film he appears in, a gangster parody with a higher joke rate than anything else here. Look Who's Talking is the biggest hit, and he plays the same character in it and its sequel. Moving Violations and Surf Ninjas are the eighties and nineties deep cuts, The Wedding Ringer is the late cameo that proves he never stopped, and The Brady Bunch in the White House is for the morbidly curious.