As a running Dana Carvey bit on Saturday Night Live told us, Mickey Rooney spent 1939 to 1941 as the biggest movie star in the world. For a look at his career just a little after this period, we go to 1943’s The Human Comedy.

After the family patriarch (Ray Collins) and oldest son Marcus (Van Johnson) goes away to war, teen Homer Macauley (Rooney) becomes the “man of the house”. While he balances high school, Homer gets a job as a telegram messenger to help with the family finances.

This leads Homer to some maturation. Other members of the Macauley clan also go through their own developments.

Comedy adapts William Saroyan’s 1943 novel – sort of. Apparently Saroyan wrote a screenplay that he wanted to direct but that didn’t go anywhere so he published it as a book instead.

I guess the studio liked the property enough to get Howard Estabrook – with supposed polish from Herman Mankiewicz – to rework the Saroyan script. The original screenplay went 240 pages and that would’ve translated into about four hours of screen time.

I certainly understand why MGM balked at a four-hour movie. However, the Estabrook version cuts everything to the bone and creates a nearly incoherent tale.

Elsewhere on this disc, we find radio adaptations of Comedy that focus almost exclusively on Homer’s part of the story. A logical cinematic version of the narrative would do the same.

Instead, the movie dallies with all sorts of borderline superfluous threads. It gets us involved with other members of the Macauley family as well as others connected to them.

This brings detours that go nowhere, and the broad mix of plot beats means none of the pieces manage to develop past the most superficial depiction possible. Comedy also links these sequences in a manner that makes little sense.

We barely get to know characters and see them come/go basically at random. The movie may connect all of them in some ways but the different threads never tie together in a satisfying way.

In its earliest segments, Comedy comes across as gooey and sappy but it shows some purpose. This disappears rapidly, however, as the flick quickly turns into a nearly random collection of semi-connected scenes.

The sappy sentimentality becomes a real issue, as director Clarence Brown can’t pull off these components to provoke any reaction other than eye-rolling. Perhaps Frank Capra could’ve made the tale work, but Brown couldn’t.

I get that Comedy wanted to provide an uplifting tale during the war, but it throws out bits that exist for no reason other than to attempt to stir heartstrings. The movie feels oddly padded and can grind to a halt for these moments.

Throw in one of the silliest endings I’ve ever seen and The Human Comedy becomes an inept disaster of a film. It will never cease to boggle my mind that the Academy nominated this terrible production for Best Picture, as it feels more like a Razzies contender to me.

The Human Comedy appears in an aspect ratio of 1.37:1 on this Blu-ray Disc. The movie usually looked quite good.

Only a few minor problems affected sharpness, as I noticed occasional signs of softness in some wide shots. Those remained infrequent, though, as the flick mostly demonstrated nice delineation and accuracy.

I witnessed no signs of jagged edges or shimmering, and edge haloes remained absent. Grain felt natural, and no print flaws materialized.

Blacks were deep and firm, while shadows came across as smooth and concise. The movie offered nice contrast from start to finish and this became a strong presentation.

The DTS-HD MA monaural soundtrack of The Human Comedy also appeared perfectly fine for an old movie like this. Speech was a little brittle but always remained concise and intelligible.

Though effects lacked heft, they seemed clean and acceptably accurate. Music was also thin but clear.

I don’t expect great range or definition from an 83-year-old flick, so I didn’t take the tinny nature of the track as a disappointment. This was a more than adequate track for an ancient flick.

As we head to extras, we find two radio adaptations of Human Comedy. We locate Screen Guild Theater (29:50) and Screen Director’s Playhouse (29:13).

Mickey Rooney reprises his role as Homer in both. Frank Morgan comes back as Grogan for Guild but Francis X. Bushman takes out that part for Playhouse.

Both whittle down the movie’s plot to focus entirely on Homer’s part of the narrative, though both do so in different ways. Guild goes after that thread in the same order seen in the film whereas Playhouse shakes up that chronology to bring tragedy into the plot earlier.

With Morgan in tow, Grogan plays a larger part in Guild and it focuses a lot on his connection to Homer. Playhouse expands to a couple other roles and looks at the darker drama more.

Neither really excels but I like both more than I do the feature film since at least the radio versions don’t throw so many barely connected plot threads at us. I also appreciate that each adaptation tells the story in a different way.

Along with the movie’s trailer, we get two vintage shorts. Part of the “John Nesbitt’s Passing Parade” series, Don’t You Believe It (10:20) looks at some “historical facts” that don’t represent reality. It offers an interesting affair.

A cartoon, Blitz Wolf (9:54) tells of the Three Little Pigs, with Hitler as the Big Bad Wolf. It seems dated but amusing.

A ridiculously sentimental mess, The Human Comedy becomes an absurd affair. Poorly constructed and generally incoherent, the movie fails in most possible ways. The Blu-ray comes with very good picture, appropriate audio and a decent mix of supplements. The only “comedy” here comes from the unintentional laughs this slop inspires.