Last night, dozens of comedians and musicians got together to perform 'A Night of Too Many Stars' on Comedy Central. The two-hour, telethon style parody of a telethon - did you get all that - was put together as a benefit for autism education. Comedy Central frontman, Jon Stewart, was the MC. The list of notable appearances included Matthew Broderick, Tina Fey, Kelsey Grammer, Kevin James, Rosie O'Donnell and Adam Sandler.
The show started well with a chorus line of actors singing about how we "need stars" to do all sorts of charitable things - an obvious jab at their own egos - but sputtered repeatedly from there. From Kevin James - in Blue Man Group attire - doing a scene from 'King of Queens' with Jerry Stiller to Rosie O'Donald talking about a telephone conversation with someone who thought she was Jewish, these comedians just weren't very funny, even as parodies go.
Sarah Silverman sang 'Amazing Grace' from her mouth, ass, and vagina. Yeah, that might have been cute when I was in the 4th grade but its just lame coming from her now. A fake 'roast' of Adam Sandler involved a series of profanity laden tirades against the roasters that was bleeped so often that the entire audio was cut for several seconds at a time. Guys, when you hear the 'bleep' over a stragetically placed curse word being used for emphasis, it's funny. When the entire conversation is bleeped, it's just annoying. There were a couple of highlights. Tina Fey allowing a donor representative to cup her right breast - all weekend - for a $100,000 donation was novel and the Roots and Maroon 5 were good musical acts. Nevertheless, even though they weren't getting paid big bucks for this charity event, 'A-listers' should bring their 'A' game, and this show looked like something thrown together over the weekend.
The best part of the show was a standoff between Chris Rock and Stephen Wright doing each other's jokes. Rock's animated interpretation of Wright's old material sounded awful, while Wright wasn't much better trying to pull off Rock's jokes in his trademark deadpan style. It was actually funny to see how jokes crash and burn without the right delivery.
Again, I understand parody. The phone banks with big names taking donations in the background was similar to almost every Jerry Lewis telethon...ever. But where was the real comedy? The event did raise millions of dollars for autism education and that was the main point. Next time, though, maybe these big 'stars' could stop making so much fun of themselves and try putting on a great show. After all, that's how you raise money in show business, right?
Some parts were funny, but even then they were either too long, or only a small part of the performance. Blue Man Group... didn't care honestly. Jerry Stiller's half-assed paint job was amusing. Kevin James somehow was not. Amy Poehler as Hillary Clinton was a segment I didn't get. Larry David's phone call was turtle paced and unrewarding. Jon Stewart should have done the standup over Rosie O Donnell. That was just unfunny storytelling about his...I mean, her family... This isn't her old talk show. Stephen Wright and Chris Rock were...out of place, for the most part unfunnily. Ben Stiller's musical performance was pretty funny, as was Jonah Hill in the introductory segment. Sarah Silverman bombed with yet ANOTHER Amazing Grace performance... Triumph sucked... Sandler swore. That's about all he did. Maybe there should have been improv? Oh well...
Posted by: dfog | April 14, 2008 at 10:49 PM