DVD REVIEW: COMEDY DVDs – CHRISTOPHER TITUS, DANA GOULD, RUSSELL PETERS, CARLOS MENCIA

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STUDIO:
Christopher Titus: Comedy Central
Dana Gould: Shout Factory
Russell Peters: Comedy Central
Carlos Mencia: Comedy Central
MSRP:
Christopher Titus: $14.99
Dana Gould: $13.49
Russell Peters: $14.49
Carlos Mencia: $17.99
RATED: Unrated (All)
RUNNING TIME:
Christopher Titus: 85 minutes
Dana Gould: 75 minutes
Russell Peters: 78 minutes
Carlos Mencia: 66 minutes
SPECIAL FEATURES:
Christopher Titus:
• Titus vs. Cupid: Behind The Scenes of the Photo Shoot 
• The Fans Speak: Love on the Rocks
• Countdown to V-Day
Dana Gould:
• Dana Gould Interview by Bob Odenkirk
• Soul Mates: A 15-minute short film by Dana Gould
• Deleted scenes

Russell Peters:
• White Jacket Bootleg deleted scenes
• Support the Troops deleted scenes
• Commentary with Russell Peters, Clayton Peters
and director Jigar Talati
• Audio CD of the performance
Carlos Mencia:
• Carlos Mencia’s Appearance on MTV Cribs
• Additional “Dean Carlos” Segment from Mind of Mencia

The Pitch

Four guys are going to try to make you laugh…with varying degrees of success.

The Humans

Christopher Titus, Dana Gould, Russell Peters, Carlos Mencia

The Nutshell

Christopher Titus, Dana Gould, Russell Peters and Carlos Mencia are stand up comics and these are DVDs of live performances they’ve each done.  Titus’ material deals mainly with his failed marriage and new relationship, Peters’ act is mostly good-natured racial humor, Mencia also deals with race and superheroes and Gould deals with subjects such as marriage and parenthood.

The Lowdown

Doing a review of a movie is subjective enough as it is, but comedy is even more so, because certainly what might make one person laugh might not be as funny – if at all – to another person.  It really comes down to personal taste.  My own preferences, if rating them like a movie, definitely go more toward the NC-17 section than the Rated G.  I like comics who aren’t afraid to skewer anybody and everybody, anything and everything in new and interesting ways, and not just the run-of-the-mill safe topics.  And hell, I’ll admit it, I like swearing and taboo material.  The racier the better.  Eddie Murphy, Richard Pryor, George Carlin (RIP), the Original Kings of Comedy (Bernie Mac had me crying on the floor in that movie, RIP) and Katt Williams to name a very few.  I also love a good celebrity roast.  I just caught Gilbert Gottfried’s Dirty Jokes special not long ago and he sold the material just by his presence and delivery.  Generally, if someone can do their act on the Tonight Show, I’m not interested.  With these four comedians I definitely liked some more than others.  Thankfully these are all unrated, uncensored acts.

Starting of with Christopher Titus with Love is Evol,
he had some good material in a polished act on Comedy Central.  I
hadn’t caught his act very much in the past. but this was a solid
performance and had the feel more of a one-man play than a comedy
routine.  His material was almost exclusively about his relationships,
specifically his failed marriage, which comprises the majority of the
act.  He also utilizes anecdotes from his new relationship.  A bit he
very frequently goes back to in the act is calling on the comments of
his “inner retard,” to the various situations in which he found himself
during the relationships.  The inner retard stuff was good but did get
a bit repetitive after a while.  Still, Love is Evol was a pretty enjoyable watch and did have some good laughs.

Not so with Dana Gould and his Let Me Put My Thoughts In You. 
I read that he’s an Emmy-winning writer for The Simpsons, but I hadn’t
caught any of Dana Gould’s material before.  I just did not find this
guy funny in the least.  His comedy set was before a smaller audience
at Second City Theatre and definitely had the feel of a small comedy
club.  His material was pedestrian and obvious and I don’t think I got a good laugh
out of virtually anything he said.  He of course dealt with issues like
marriage and the terrors of parenthood, before moving on to streams of
consciousness stuff like the astronaut who wore the diaper while
driving all night to supposedly go kill her rival, polar bears growing
dolphin blow holes and the devil and waxing.  I was bored with it to be
perfectly honest.  This special is currently on TV right now (Showtime
I believe).  If you feel the need to catch it, try it there before
spending your money on this DVD.

Then there’s Russell Peters with his Red, White & Brown. 
It’s hilarious.  My wife and I caught this on TV months ago and we were
both laughing our asses off, and we have quite different senses of
humor.  Peters’ shtick here is almost exclusively racial humor, but he
does it in such a relaxed and smooth way that the only people who would
be truly offended are anal retards.  Peters is half-Anglo, half-Indian
on both sides of his family, and is from Canada, so he works in a lot
of Indian cultural humor, with the perfect accent.  He also does great
Caribbean, Middle Eastern, Southern and other various accents.  He
manages to bring new perspectives on heavily trod ground and it’s just
a delight to watch.  His style has a casual raucousness and his very
multi-ethnic audience was just in stitches the entire set.  Topics he
touches upon are being Indian and going to India for the first time,
deftly spoofing the various races vs. their various cultures, and then
more lowbrow stuff like body hair and how the deaf are worthy of being
made fun of like anybody else.  Whereas I was struggling to get through
Gould’s disc, this one flew by and I didn’t want it to stop.  This guy
is uproarious.

Finally, Carlos Mencia rounds out the group with his Performance Enhanced, filmed from his performance at the Hard Rock Hotel Theatre in Florida.  A lot of Mencia’s material also deals with race, particularly white guilt over using the N-word, and superheroes if they were different races.  He also deals with his trip to the Middle East, how much he looks like Muslims and how Muslims are of bacon.  He also touches on gays in the military, how much he hates vegetarians and how guys really like whores.  Mencia’s act is more crude than Peters’, as they both deal with a lot of the same kind of stuff, but it was still good for a few laughs.  The crowd was definitely into it.

As a rule, I would never buy a comedy DVD unless it was a classic like Eddie Murphy Raw or one of Carlin’s performances.  The only one of these I would say would be worth buying is Russell Peters’, but I saw it on TV before the DVD was out, so my advice is wait for it. 

The Package

The best disc as I said, is Russell Peters’, not only for his content, but because his is the only one to include a bonus audio CD of the performance.  His disc also has a commentary by Peters, Clayton Peters and director Jigar Talati.  It also contains some deleted scenes of performances that also have some good material called The White Jacket Bootleg and Support the Troops.  Titus has three features: Titus vs. Cupid: Behind The Scenes of the Photo Shoot, The Fans Speak: Love on the Rocks and Countdown to V-Day.  Gould’s disc has an with interview with Gould by Bob Odenkirk, a 15-minute short film by Gould called Soul Mates, and deleted scenes.  Mencia’s is the leanest of the batch, with only his appearance on MTV Cribs and an additional “Dean Carlos” segment from Mind of Mencia.