Review by Steve Bennett

But it takes more than a few homemade drawings and twee tales to make comedy, and unfortunately that’s the trap likeable 21-year-old Tommy Dassalo has fallen into. He can certainly tell a story, which is undeniably a skill, but putting laughs in them proves a lot more elusive.

Tellingly, when he sticks even loosely, to reality, he’s warm, engaging and quietly funny. But it’s the excursions into cutesy sub-children’s fiction where he comes unstuck, with fanciful tales of a fake food critic, a pest exterminator who ends up adopting his prey and a lovelorn creature living in the jungle seeming very lightweight. The strip cartoons that bookend each section – drawn as frames on his giant cardboard version of the Viewmaster children’s stereoscopic slide viewer – likewise substitute sugary amateurness for real wit.

But when he tells of a family party that goes awry when he and his father accidentally lock a child in a half-abandoned shed, he demonstrates what he is capable of. Even this isn’t the most hilarious of yarns, but the way he slowly unfolds the tale has the audience involved and entertained. It’s rather too obviously scripted, and the delivery could do with being less flat, but it has a nice confessional wit missing from those routines he draws from his imagination, rather than real life.

Reviewed by: Steve Bennett

Review date: 1 Apr 2008
Reviewed by: Steve Bennett