| The Original Kings of Comedy |
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| 1/2 |
| Rating: Mixed Distributor: Paramount Pictures MPAA Rating: R Genre: Documentary, Stand Up Comedy Release Date: August 18th, 2000 (wide) Running Length: 1 hour, 53 minutes Director: Spike Lee With Comedians: Steve Harvey, D.L. Hughley, Cedric the Entertainer, and Bernie Mac. |
| Description: Spike Lee captures the acts of four African American comedies in a show at Charlotte, North Carolina. There humor might not be for all tastes, but I assume most are fine with the rampid profanity. (I did not mind it, but it I think it got in the way of their delivery at times.) All of the kings have apply pieces of social commentary with their jokes, but mostly this is not something to be analyzed. There is no deep meaning, but many find these popular comedians to be very effective. The order is Hughley, Cedric, and then Mac with smaller pieces by Steve Harvey in between. |
| Critique: For professional comedians I was surprised how sloppy the four comics' deliveries were. They throw jokes out wildly without composing themselves, or being clear. Nonetheless, it was obvious all of them, with the exception of D.L. Hughley had talent. Steve Harvey's material was solid, and Cedric the Entertainer's was equally solid, but the comedian who stole the show was the last presenter- Bernie Mac. He was flat out hilarious, he hit every joke right on the dot. The problem was however, besides him the jokes were inconsistently funny, and often unoriginal. Although Harvey, and Cedric did fine, but not for professional comedians. As for D.L. Hughley- someone needs to tell that man that he is not funny, and is so far from it that it is painful to watch. He drags down his peers, and has obviously no depth, or interesting points to make. He was so desperate at one point, he took to pointing out different members of the crowd and teasing them. His jokes consisted of (not totally out of context) "look at the woman with all that red," or "he got big eyes." Also, I was not impressed with Spike Lee's documentary style. The few backstage scenes we get are short, and unorganized. The movie advertises as a documentary with behind the stage interactions. That would have been much more interesting, and perhaps we would have learned something about those quirky comedians we were watching. Nonetheless, Lee makes an executive decision to focus on the stand up. The problem with that however, was that combined they were not all that funny. In fact, I highly recommend skipping the whole tape and fast forwarding to Bernie Mac's outrageous hilarity. As I say Cedric and Harvey are not that impressive, although they hit sometimes. In conclusion, the film has stand up that is not that funny, as well as inept and painfully short takes of the comedians by themselves by director Lee. I will give the film this credit however, it was funny a here and there. by supernothingman |