Review of Greg Behrendt Is Uncool

Introduction

DVD is actually a pretty good medium for capturing the act of a good stand up comic. It`s a good deal for everyone involved. You get a couple of good-view tickets at a good show, and the Producers get to cover the whole thing with a couple of good DV cameras (one wide, one on the close-ups) and a single feed from the sound desk. Everyone`s a winner. Or so the theory goes.

But we all know that video has a cruel and cold way of capturing everything but the atmosphere. Many great concerts have been filmed and prove to be dull viewing. Sadly, the same could be said for comedy. Apart from a really excellent Steve Coogan video from some ten years ago or so, I don`t think I`ve ever really seen a good one. This is no exception.

I`m sure there will be people in the audience of this show who will protest that `you really had to be there`. And they`re probably right. The audience is certainly enjoying the show tremendously. But in when transported into the cool, sober light of a living room, it doesn`t quite cut the mustard. Which is not to say it`s all bad.

For the `who-he` crowd (and I was one of them), Greg Behrendt is perhaps most famous as the co-author of best-selling self-help book He`s Just Not That Into You and he`s also been a consultant for Sex in the City, both facts that he manages to squeeze into his routine.

So what`s his particular schtick? There`s a commonality to his book and TV consultancy (he was the only male consultant for `Sex and the City`), which is that he`s a male prepared to spill the beans (to females) of what really makes men tick.

`Greg Behrendt Is Uncool` captures a date on his relatively recent tour. (August 2005). It`s a journey into the funny side of getting older and becoming `uncool`.

Included here in this hour set are skits about getting older and waking up in pain because you `slept wrong`; playing Black Sabbath to his baby daughter so that she might think he was cool when she was older (revealing that Mr. Behrendt believes that playing early 70`s rock is cool in common with many other deluded American males of his age); getting as much enthusiasm and hype into your job as a Financial Consultant as you did into your own band by making little badges and posters about yourself … and so on.

There`s a `Pictionary` sketch that was mildly amusing for a few moments but which went on and on - showing that Behrendt hasn`t yet perfected the art of brevity. But brevity means developing more material and it`s clear that the really good stuff is pretty thin on the ground here.

It`s mildly amusing observational humour that a man of my age (in his 40`s) can relate to, but presented in a `shouting American` style that makes it very average when compared to any of the comedic stand-up greats.

Video

The picture looks just fine - a good quality DV-Cam recording nicely transferred.

Audio

Well, this is just one guy at a Mike so don`t expect a 5.1 demo - but it`s fine.

Features

A couple of short films; one interviewing a variety of C-list American celebrities about `cool` and some of the uncool things they`ve done (includes comedian David Cross and ex-Playmate Jenny McCarthy. It`s mildly diverting at best. The other `featurette` is a very bad joke about a mythical band (Greg`s ) that don`t actually play music. That`s their usp - they play nothing! Geddit? No? Me neither. Like a Monty Python sketch handed to David Hasselhoff.

Conclusion

In a way, there`s a cheesy feeling of falseness to the proceedings here. Here`s a man who`s very knowing, very sussed, very LA. But it`s self-deprecating humour at its worst because it`s clear that he doesn`t really mean it. In truth, he`s still a strutting peacock of a man, (dropping in references to his glamorous lifestyle with no sense of irony), pretending to make himself the butt of jokes but somehow you know that, despite protesting that he`s `uncool`, he secretly believes the reverse. Whatever Michael Bolton did for soul music, Greg Behrendt manages to do for comedy. It`s not bad, it`s highly professional, and all the right bits are in the right places, but it just doesn`t quite ring true.

To be fair, it has its moments and you wouldn`t demand your money back, but you wouldn`t want to watch this more than once either. I laughed aloud more than once it`s true, though scarcely enough to justify a rental and certainly not anywhere near loudly enough to justify a purchase.