By Frank Scheck, The Hollywood Reporter, September 11, 2019
Michelle Esrick's documentary chronicles comedian Darrell Hammond's efforts to overcome the lingering emotional effects of childhood trauma.
As he proved during his 14-year-stint on Saturday Night Live, Darrell Hammond is adept at playing any kind of character. And as the new documentary Cracked Up illustrates all too vividly and movingly, the one character he was truly uncomfortable embodying was himself.
Michelle Esrick's film (for which Chris Hegedus and the late D.A. Pennebaker served as co-producers) begins with a scene in which Hammond revisits his childhood home, located on the idyllically named Wisteria Drive in Melbourne, Florida. The house is nondescript, looking like any small suburban dwelling. But for Hammond when he was growing up, it was a virtual house of horrors, the place where his emotionally troubled mother inflicted physical and emotional abuse on him.
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