The Blake's 7 Effect - Comedy Version
Sep. 23rd, 2005 10:57 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
the_elyanMany yars ago, when I was at University, I saw Eddie Murphy's "Raw". It would take me at least a week's hard thinking to remember whose room I was in, who I watched it with, or how long I'd been drinking for beforehand. I do remember laughing my ass off.
Rewatched it over the last two nights, for the first time in ten years. Hmmm. Yes. It's not that it's misogynist (though it is) or irredeemably potty-mouthed. It's just that the material isn't very funny. There were barely half a dozen moments in the 80 minutes of it that reghistered even a snigger.
The thing, before you all come away with the idea that I'm even more of a prude than I already sound like, is that Eddie's earlier stand-up show "Delirious" still makes me laugh. It's not the best stand-up performance I own, but it's got some damned fine bits in it, and the whole works pretty well together. "Raw", by contrast, just seems gratuitous.
The fundamental difference between the two shows, I guess, is that when Delirious was filmed, in 1983, Eddie Murphy was 22, had just made it to the top of the comedy tree, and was still hungry for the glory. Four years later, when "Raw" was filmed, he'd made Beverley Hills Cop II, and the slow descent into just another Hollywood above-the-title big draw was well in train. The need to prove comedy genius was gone, and with it the instinctive ability to be a comedy genius.
Rewatched it over the last two nights, for the first time in ten years. Hmmm. Yes. It's not that it's misogynist (though it is) or irredeemably potty-mouthed. It's just that the material isn't very funny. There were barely half a dozen moments in the 80 minutes of it that reghistered even a snigger.
The thing, before you all come away with the idea that I'm even more of a prude than I already sound like, is that Eddie's earlier stand-up show "Delirious" still makes me laugh. It's not the best stand-up performance I own, but it's got some damned fine bits in it, and the whole works pretty well together. "Raw", by contrast, just seems gratuitous.
The fundamental difference between the two shows, I guess, is that when Delirious was filmed, in 1983, Eddie Murphy was 22, had just made it to the top of the comedy tree, and was still hungry for the glory. Four years later, when "Raw" was filmed, he'd made Beverley Hills Cop II, and the slow descent into just another Hollywood above-the-title big draw was well in train. The need to prove comedy genius was gone, and with it the instinctive ability to be a comedy genius.
