Steven Wright: When the Leaves Blow Away (2006)
Dry, wry and hilariously deadpan, Steven Wright unleashes a torrent of ironic and hysterical thought-provoking one-liners in the quirky stand-up style that has become his trademark. From Toronto's historic Elgin Theater, this Oscar-winning comedian keeps an adoring audience in stitches with random observations on everything from baby monitors as a form of wiretapping to his addiction to placebos.
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Too much of everything
It's entirely possible that sending the audience out feeling lousy was intentional
By the time the dramatic fireworks start popping off, each one feels earned.
The best films of this genre always show a path and provide a takeaway for being a better person.
The stand up portion of When All the Leaves Blow away is absolutely hysterical. Wright's dry deadpan humor kept me laughing during the entire concert. I am amazed that Wright can perform his routine and keep it so dead pan and straight faced, particularly when the audience is cracking up.I viewed this via a streaming service, so the concert was unfortunately followed up with Wright's own short film "One Soldier". It really feels like one eternity. (I believe that the DVD version also includes this short film.) Clearly an exposition of Wrights internal monologue regarding life and death, this film is tortuously boring, and not at all funny. Even when Wright includes formerly hysterical material from his stand up routine, these jokes fall below flat. It is possible when viewed separate from the concert material, it is a good short film. It is definitely interesting, dry, and witty, much more quirky than funny. However, its presentation directly following the laugh out loud comedy is a real turn off.If I was rating only the stand-up concert, it would have gotten a 10. But the short film pulls the presentation down to a five. Do yourself a favor, watch the stand up concert, but skip the short film. Or save "One Soldier" for a time when you wish to feel more existential.
I'll have to concede that there may be people that prefer lively acts like Chris Rock to Dave Chappele but this is hands down the best stand up act I've ever seen and American stand up comedy is my main hobby. The delivery of the jokes is amazing, this guy absolutely bombards you with one liners until you cant stop laughing and then tells complex stories to wind you down and then hits you again with hilarious punch lines. Hes extremely professional and holds his dead pan until the end - sometimes he pretends to drink water just to get rid of his grin or turns his back to the audience to hide his smile. The jokes are not period jokes, they are absolutely timeless pieces of observational comedy and manipulations of our perception of every day objects. I'd love to sit here quoting him but I ticked no spoilers :)
Either you love Steven Wright's dry on-liner humor told in his trademark deadpan delivery, or you don't. I'm definitely in the former category. So sadly haven missed this special when it was on cable, I was over-enthusiastic to get it when it came out on DVD earlier this week. Some of the material almost had me in tears. Not sad tears, mind you. I heard some repeated variations off his older material (the dream movie bit), but for the most part it's new material (to me anyways). So yeah, I enjoyed it very much. If you want a good laugh, rent/buy this one now. Also as an added bonus you get his short film "One Soldier" and small clips of one of his shows in '88.