No moment of acting--not even Shatner's "Khaaaaaaaaan!"--divides fans more than this. I'm of the "it was brilliant" camp precisely because it was uncomfortable to watch. I really felt that Benny was experiencing a full-on nervous breakdown here, perhaps even a psychotic break, and Brooks's body language and voice conveyed just how spectacularly awful such a thing is to witness. No one undergoing such a break stops to wonder "Is this over the top?" To me, this was an actor stripping himself of his vanity to fully expose the anguish his character was feeling.
