“(The) richest, most intelligent Hollywood movie of 1983.... (B)etween them, Scorsese, Robert De Niro and screenwriter Paul Zimmerman have created an American archetype: Rupert Pupkin...the celebrity-crazed would-be standup comedian who attaches himself to TV talk-show host Jerry Lewis.... Like Zelig...The King of Comedy is a mediation on American celebrity but--dealing as it does with rampant aggression, pure megalomania, visceral embarrassment and pathetic humiliation--it's a good deal more disturbing. The film is hardly flawless...but its considerable pleasures range from Scorsese's sense of TV schlock to Jerry Lewis's fantastically uptight body-language.” J. Hoberman, Village Voice