These Comedy Central Roasts are a bit of a crapshoot. I laughed my rear off during the William Shatner Roast. Unfortunately, I didn’t even crack a smile watching this one. It’s not like Saget’s a funny guy to begin with. Throw in a room full of other not-funny folks, and you get a real snore fest.
You should be warned that this is not a DVD for the kids. I’m not sure how much of this actually aired on Comedy Central, but I suspect it was edited considerably. I think they had a rule that no speaker could tell less than 3 penis or vagina jokes. Apparently jokes involving both don’t count toward that total. Look, I’m not a prude here. I don’t want to see these guys censored. But, doesn’t the material need to be funny BEFORE it’s dirty? Comedians like Richard Pryor have always used this kind of language, but Richard was a very funny guy. Somewhere along the way it must have become an axiom that bad language is funny. One of the comedians said it best. He was talking about Saget, but it was true of them all: “If bad language is a crutch, these guys are quadriplegics.” Another problem I have with this thing is the format. I always thought Roasts were about the guest of honor. These acts spent as much time sniping at each other as they did getting Saget.
Let’s play a little of The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly, shall we?
The Good:
This is going to be a very short list.
Don Rickles: It figures that the best talent there, wasn’t even there. Don did about 2 minutes via tape, and in that short time he took all of the other guys to school.
Gilbert Gottfried: At least he had some laughs.
Jeff Ross: His stuff was the most to the point. He wasn’t reaching so hard.
The Bad:
This is gonna take some time:
Norm McDonald: This was one of the lamest collection of one liners I’ve ever heard. It didn’t look like he was even trying.
Sarah Silverman: Another taped performance. She couldn’t even pull off 3 minutes without cue cards and about 50 obvious edits.
Jon Lovitz: He decided to sing his lame jokes.
Greg Giraldo: Did he even mention Bob Saget? He was getting off way too much on riffing the panel.
Jeff Garland: He decided to do a character. I don’t know which was worse.
John Stamos: He hosted this stupid thing
The Ugly:
Pretty much all of them fit this section but….
Lewis Black: Do I have to say any more than that?
Cloris Leachman: She’s not ugly, just ancient. She looked like Boris Karloff both before and after the Mummy makeup.
Jim Norton: Was that his head or a jack-o-lantern?
Susie Essman: The worse part is she knows it. Now that’s funny.
Video
The Roast is presented in its original full frame aspect ratio. This looks exactly like you would expect a studio live production to look. Nothing fancy. Lighting’s not really the best. Black levels are average. Let’s face it, you’re not in this for the A/V quality, are you now?
Audio
The Dolby Digital 2.0 track captures what it is intended to capture: dialog.
Special Features
There are a series of 2-5 minute back stage features. All of which are as lame as the feature presentation.
Final Thoughts:
If you really feel like you must watch this thing, rent it or wait for it to show back up on Comedy Central. Don’t waste your money on this crap. Why? “Bob Saget. That’s all I have to say. That’s the punch line.”
