Slapinions

Vince Vaughn's Wild West Comedy Show is a documentary of a '30 towns-in-30 nights' tour Vaughn organized around four relatively unknown young comedians. Vaughn says the purpose of the 2005 tour was to give people in the heartland and small town America a glimpse of a premier comedy show that they ordinarily wouldn't get a chance to see.

[I fail to see how X # of stops in California and Vegas achieve that goal, but allrighty.]

Notice that I said it's a documentary, not a concert film. This is more like the 'making of' portion of the tour, with snippets of monologues tossed in left and right but no complete set, nor even half of one.

Vince Vaughn comes off as surprisingly articulate and intelligent and I get the impression many of his 'characters' are no more than variants of the man himself. Vaughn is interesting when he's on the screen, and some of the comedy clips are great.

And for some . . well, maybe you had to be there.

At a few points the crew pushes the self-indulgent idea  that stand up comedy is an art form that expresses, analyzes, and aids the inner turmoil that is the 'artist' . Eh, it probably does, but even so it ain't Beethoven man. It's jokes about roller skating and BJ's. Keep it in perspective buddy.

However, I did think there was one big problem with the film.

Namely, the comics were not that funny.

Ahmed Ahmed was a bore. While I applaud him for turning the post-9/11 backlash against Muslims (including one apparently bogus arrest in an airport) into a career, I imagine it would kill me if, as an artist, I was confined to one narrow subject matter ad nauseam. How exhausting.

Bret Ernst was hit or miss but batted a thousand past the midpoint of the film. Sebastian Maniscalco was still employed as a waiter when picked for the tour, and I can see why he needed a day job.

However, John Caparulo rocked and was funny as hell. I was suitably impressed when he cleaned up his potty mouth act for the all ages show after Hurricane Katrina - a mark of a true professional.

Overall a topsy-turvy, uneven film that could've used a few minutes less runtime.

2.5 out of 4, 60 out of 100.

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• #1 Comment from luvrte66 
  7/21/08 8:04 AM | Permalink

  I like Vince Vaughn, but sorry to hear the comedians were so-so. I don't know if you get the Bob & Tom Show up there, but there are a couple of DVD's out of their "all-star" tours. Ken and I have been to a few of their live shows, and these are some very funny guys, believe me. If you find one to rent, try to get one with Drew Hastings, one of my favorites.
  
  Two thumbs up from me, four if you count Ken's!
  
  Beth
  http://journals.aol.com/luvrte66/nutwoodjunction/