Review of Behind the Camera: The Unauthorized Story of Mork & Mindy

In the 1920's they called it "going Hollywood" — talented but naïve kid from the sticks gets a big movie deal, becomes an overnight sensation, gets big-headed, blows his money on alcohol (an illegal substance in the U.S. back then) and sex, then either dies young or pulls himself together, gives up the booze and returns to the woman who loved him before he became famous. In 1933 Raoul Walsh directed a film with that title, starring Bing Crosby and Marion Davies, and "Behind the Camera: The Unauthorized Story of 'Mork and Mindy'" could almost be considered a remake. It takes the known facts of Robin Williams' early success and presses them into the familiar cliché mold, with cocaine instead of alcohol and John Belushi as a sort of Mephistopheles to Williams' Faust. Best things here are Chris Diamantopoulos' eerily exact reproduction of the early Robin Williams and some bits of felicitous creativity in the writing (especially when Diamantopoulos as Williams encounters a busker doing him doing Williams and gives him $100).