Post by BIGFANBOY on Feb 8, 2008 6:51:11 GMT -5
VINCE VAUGHN'S WILD WEST COMEDY SHOW
Review by Gary Dean Murray
Vince Vaughn is arguably on of the best comic actors working today. Some of his hits have been Old School, Swingers, Fred Claus, and Wedding Crashers. Through these films he has established this wisecracking sidekick persona. While his supporting roles have come across better than his leading ones, he still manages to keep in the spotlight both on and off screen.
His newest film is a digital video documentary and has the longest title of 2008: Vince Vaughn’s Wild West Comedy Show: 30 Days and 30 Nights – Hollywood to the Heartland.
Patterned after the idea of Wild Bill Cody’s Wild West shows of magnitude from over a century ago, the idea here is to bring a crazy assortment of stand-ups and comic actors together to entertain in the Heartland. The show is a barnstorming one, where they are setting out in busses and do 30 different shows, in 30 different cities, on 30 consecutive nights.
Some of the people they meet along the way get into the act. In Bakersville, they are introduced to Buck Owens and Vince seems star-struck at the encounter. That night, the troop has Dwight Yokum on stage, performing. Vince and Dwight do a duet of a Buck Owens tune. LA actors get into the act, doing sketch comedy on stage, some just show up for a single show and others take on the entire 30 days. There are celebrities such as director Taylor Hackford interviewed and in the crowd.
But the main thrust of the entire film is the evolution of the four stand-up comics (all from the Comedy Store in LA) as they attempt the biggest hell gig of all time. The comics are Ahmed Ahmed, John Caparulo, Bret Ernst and Sebastian Maniscalco. They all go through something between comedy boot camp and comedy hell. They bravely set out to do these 30 shows in 30 nights in the summer of 2005, traveling over 6,000 miles on custom buses.
But things don’t go as planned—Katrina. The storm takes them away from their intended itinerary. They do two shows in Dallas just to keep the one a day pace.
Out of the four main performers I have to give the biggest props to John Caparulo. With his wicked smirk and child-like frame, he comes across more like the bad kid in junior high who knew all the words to every Richard Pryor recording. There is this ease he projects on stage as if the audience were a bunch of his closest buddies and he was just messing around. His stand-up is Americana and he runs by the spoken adage of “Know yourself and be honest of who you are.”
Ahmed Ahmed is an Egyptian comic, a first generation immigrant. And while his act does come off as the most polished, it is more one-note than the other performers. He makes the Middle Eastern experience a universal one.
There are some moments that change these comics. When they are asked to go and pass out tickets to a trailer camp full of Katrina evacuees, they are griping and pouting. These four self involved individuals are in foul moods because they have to get up and meet the masses. But when they arrive and see just how bad the people are living and how grateful the evacuees are for the opportunity to see a comedy show, just to forget about life for awhile, it becomes a humbling experience. Comics speak from insecurity but the scenes from the victims show these guys exactly how small and petty their insecurities are in the real world.
I found the film to drag along as they go from city to city. There should have been more on-stage antics and less of all the physical events of the tour. I actually would like to have seen the sets of the comics as well as the set of Vince Vaughn who is supposedly a stand-up comic. We don’t have to see something from every place on the tour. We know where they are going and don’t have to have every dot connected along the way.
Vince Vaughn’s Wild West Comedy Show: 30 Days and 30 Nights – Hollywood to the Heartland is an interesting document of a time and a place but it is not as funny as one would expect. But, I would like to see this become a series with different performers going through the paces of such a tour.
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