There's two reasons for that.
One is Dick van Dyke's utterly feeble attempt to portray his character as an old man.
The other is the hairstyles.
This 1969 film is set in the Hollywood of the 1920s yet no one sports a haircut appropriate to the era. Everyone is wearing their hair late 60s style - long and shaggy. Maybe the production budget didn't stretch to a barber but the end result is it looks sloppy. It also detracts from the authenticity of the setting.But that's a small complaint compared with van Dyke's totally unconvincing performance in the second half of the film. His character, Billy Bright, is not exactly a spring chicken when we first encounter him in early 1920s Los Angeles. Let's be charitable and say he's in his early 30s. That would mean he's in his mid 70s in the scenes set in the present day when he's reminiscing about his life and times as one of the silent cinema's biggest comedians. But even if he'd pursued every faddy diet promoted by his contemporary, Gloria Swanson, he would not look as (comparatively) young and fresh-faced as he does.
The only concession van Dyke makes to the aging process is to don a wig of thinning hair. Otherwise the 74 year old Billy Bright looks exactly like 45 year old Dick van Dyke. This refusal to make anything more than a token token effort at growing old further undermines the story's credibility.
Given that THE COMIC was a labor of love by writer-director Carl Reiner, created as a vehicle for van Dyke to indulge his passion for the great comedians of the silent era, it's surprising and disappointing that so little attention was paid to the important details. If they thought he could carry the film by force of personality alone they were wrong. What's intended as a searing critique of a talent overwhelmed by ego turns out to be an object lesson in how ego can smother a good idea.
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