Comics of great import

Steve Bennett reviews DVDs from three acts you've probably never heard of

Dutch indie label Pias – a catchy acronym for Play It Again Sam – is a new player in the British comedy DVD world, currently dipping its toes in the potentially lucrative market with a few imports, though bigger plans are afoot.

It has a few ‘name’ comics in its catalogue, including sound-effects maestro Pablo Francisco and the notorious Katt Williams; but these three releases – recent American TV specials committed to disc – come from names that will be familiar to few.

In fact, you would be forgiven for thinking they weren’t even English-speaking acts, because the pan-European nature of Pias’s business means the sleeves are prominently emblazoned with the word ‘subtitled’, but rest assured that’s for the benefit of the Scandinavian consumers, among others.

On the strength of these offerings, none of these three – Pete Correale, Michael Loftus and Bert Kreischer – are likely to imminently become household names this side of the Atlantic. They are very American acts; all very slick, occasionally hitting a brilliantly sharp line, but all made from the same cookie-cutter, with inspiration coming from a very shallow pool. They share the archetypal stand-up’s point of view as a marginally dysfunctional late thirtysomething white man, who drinks too much, prefers a lazy life, and is disgruntled with the constraints of married life – especially the lack of sex.

Bert Kreischer is potentially the best of the three, with an 85-minute show that demonstrates an astute grasp of storytelling. But even so, whenever he hits his flow, he seems compelled to throw in an cheap joke based on a hack idea, as it to reassure the audience, or himself, with an easy laugh.

This is best demonstrated with his routine about getting involved in a fight with a black man, which flirts smartly with all the social ramifications of such a sight while remaining an engaging personal anecdote. Then he closes the bit with an offensively lazy gag about how hard it was to fight him because it was night, so he couldn’t see him. And no, making a joke about it being similarly hard to fight a white man in the snow doesn’t make it all right.

Kreischer isn’t afraid to depict himself as unenlightened on the race front, claming, for example, not to have realised that Japanese and Chinese people aren’t the same – an ignorance you suspect he shares with some of his audience. But such gags have a habit of letting him down, as does his deployment of the tedious stereotype that people from the Far East have small penises that every second American comic seems duty-bound to joke about.

But sometimes his segments go the other way, starting with the unpromising premise ‘anyone here smoke pot?’ which leads him into a wittily surreal yarn about taking acid and visiting DisneyWorld that dodges the easy jokes.

Kreischer’s biggest assets, though, are surely his bulging eyes, which give him a brilliantly cartoonish look of dumbfounded shock whenever his routines demand it. That expression, you will surely remember.

There’s less to stand out in Pete Correale’s disc. His desire to be Jerry Seinfeld is obvious even from the DVD sleeve, which seemingly emulates the microphone-n-the-street poster for the sitcom star’s Comedian film. But Correale’s Everyman material is far more predictable – putting together Ikea furniture, anyone – while his writing rarely breaks out of a simplistic template. ‘A party without booze?’ he despairs. ‘That's like getting a hooker to play cards.’

His grumpy New Yorker shtick is not without merit – and the Italian-American rhythm he is lucky enough to have is second only to Jewish Lower East Side for being the perfect stand-up meter - but there’s little substance to back it up.

His whole act seems to be geared towards getting him the role as a long-suffering husband on an unambitious mainstream sitcom – not the starring role mind, but maybe the star’s best buddy. Which is all just a bit safe for stand-up.

Michael Loftus has a very similar outlook, with a show that revolves around his disappointments of being married for seven years. It’s a life with the romance sucked out it, where kids sap your individuality, you never get oral sex and any bedroom encounter has to be conducted in near-silence to avoid waking the youngsters.

Any stand-up fan is likely to have heard plenty of material like this before – and that’s even before we get onto the routines about pot giving you the munchies or the indignities of a prostate exam that every male comedian of a certain age seems to include.

It’s executed with an appealing style, and some moments shine: his tale of buying dope in Jamaica winningly personalises the otherwise generic drug routines, while his intolerance of idiotic behaviour taps into a disparaging rage, even though that section is unfortunately short-lived.

The upshot is a DVD that, unfortunately given the distributor’s name, you probably won’t want to play again, Sam.