Even if you don't know the name Aries Spears, you know damn well who Aries Spears is: he's the dude from MADtv, the guy from Def Comedy Jam, the guy who does the really, really solid Shaquille O'Neal impression. Anyway, Spears is a gifted impressionist and an above-average standup comic, but he's never been one of our preferred comedians here at Comedy Examiner HQ. Would that change after watching his latest standup DVD, the awkwardly-titled Hollywood Look I'm Smiling? Read on to find out, my gentle Examiner readers...
Let's get this out of the way upfront, because I think it's relevant to what follows: I was never a fan of MADtv. In point of fact, I couldn't stand the show. It always felt like what it was-- a shameless, low-rent knockoff of Saturday Night Live, the queen mother of all sketch-comedy shows-- and the cast's "breakout characters" always left me cold. That one character, the old Asian lady? Awful. You couldn't pay me to sit and watch five minutes of that. Unfortunately for Aries Spears-- who starred on MADtv for seven seasons-- my disdain for MADtv meant that I was late to the Aries Spears party.
Which isn't to say that the "Aries Spears party" is raging: dude doesn't have any big projects on the horizon. He's not promoting a new Michael Bay movie, he doesn't have a new sitcom on FOX. He's in-between projects right now, I suppose you could say, but on the basis of his standup in Hollywood Look I'm Smiling, I'm guessing that he might very well have something lined up sooner rather than later. It's good stuff.
Spears' people sent me a copy of the special last week, and-- after letting one thing after another get between me and my DVD player-- I finally sat down to watch the special earlier this afternoon. For my money, I can always tell when a standup special's worth a damn if I end up laughing out loud while watching it. That sounds like an incredibly obvious thing to say, but for me, it holds true: when I'm watching standup-- particularly if it's just me, the couch, and a TV-- I rarely laugh out loud. I'll nod when a comedian lands a particularly solid punchline, and sometimes I'll chuckle, but only rarely (and only during standup specials that are genuinely funny) will I laugh out loud. The more I laugh out loud (I refuse to use that ridiculous acronym), the funnier the special is.
With Hollywood Look I'm Smiling, I laughed out loud maybe half a dozen times. What does this mean for you, the reader? Well, as a point of comparison, I laughed out loud roughly 25 times while watching Ricky Gervais' last HBO special, Out of England 2. Last time I watched Patrice O'Neal (who might be favorably compared to Spears), I laughed out loud maybe 15 times. On the other end of the spectrum, I laughed precisely zero times-- and, in fact, was moved to suicidal thoughts by the unfunniness of-- Julio Iglesias' last special. I have that same zero-laugh reaction whenever I've seen Jeff Dunham perform. So, Hollywood Look I'm Smiling falls somewhere in-between Julio Iglesias and Patrice O'Neal.
Spears is gifted with impressions, so for me, any moment in Hollywood Look I'm Smiling that features Spears delivering material in an altered voice won me over. An early bit about ordering food from a Hispanic worker in a Popeye's chicken, for instance, was funny even if the material itself was kind of stale (I mean, really, I think George Lopez has wrung every last ounce of funny out of the mispronunciations made by Mexicans). One can imagine that Spears would be good on a show that showcases his talents here, but then, I suppose we already got that with MADtv. Maybe what I mean to say is, one can imagine Spears would be good on a show that showcases his talent with impressions that's funnier in general than MADtv.
Reviewing a standup special is always harder than reviewing a movie. With a movie, I can tell you the exact purpose of the film, what the director was trying to say, and how it oughtta make you-- the audience member-- feel. With standup, things are a little different: you're coming from a different place than I am, and different people enjoy different comedians in a far more specific way than they do with movies. What we find funny is a more personal thing than, say, whether or not we enjoy dramas, as our sense of humor is informed by our backgrounds, how we were raised, our tastes, and so on. I can tell you that I laughed while watching Aries Spears' Hollywood Look I'm Smiling, but I can tell you that it was somewhat infrequent. I can tell you that I found a lot of the material to be stale ("the difference between white people and black people" has been done beyond death: it is a zombie of a premise), but I can also tell you that the audience seemed to be thriving on Spears' material.
Diff'rent strokes for diff'rent folks. Let's leave it at this: if you enjoy Spears as a performer in general, you'll probably enjoy Hollywood Look I'm Smiling. If you didn't enjoy Spears on MADtv, on Def Comedy Jam, or anywhere else you've ever seen him, you should probably skip this one. It's not great, but it's not awful. It's somewhere in between, and-- for me-- that's somehow even more frustrating than if it'd been terrible. But, hey, that's just me. You might feel differently.
My Grade? B-
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