Lewis Black: In God We Rust (2012)
The Emmy nominated, Grammy-winning Lewis Black hits the historic State Theatre stage in Minneapolis for a rant-filled, cathartic ride through through the issues of our baffling world, from inept politicians and the shortcomings of technology to the absurdity of social media. No topic is left unexplored in this sold out performance by the bestselling author, actor, playwright and The Daily Show contributor.
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Why so much hype?
Excellent, Without a doubt!!
The movie's neither hopeful in contrived ways, nor hopeless in different contrived ways. Somehow it manages to be wonderful
Very good movie overall, highly recommended. Most of the negative reviews don't have any merit and are all pollitically based. Give this movie a chance at least, and it might give you a different perspective.
*** Some Spoilers ** I have seen this special a couple times. And Lewis Black used to be so much better. But he has gone the way of a lot of comics who yell at the camera and wave their arms frantically and substitute silly on stage breakdowns and arm flailing for actual humor. In this show he even imitates his own old joke about why we don't have solar power,. and how it makes politicians want to pee themselves. He could have found a better joke to reformulate that that one of his jokes. Is Lewis Black past it all? Possibly if this is the best show he can do in what was almost an hour. I really don't think this show can appeal to very many people now. I recommend replaying the shows of the late John Pinette.
Lewis Black is subdued and perhaps ill in this video. He looks thinner than normal.It doesn't have the energy of most of his concerts. There are cutout edits in the film that don't appear to be necessary. Guerilla comedy avant-garde editing? C'mon.Still, there were some very funny bits and if you love Lewis Black like I do, it's worth a little over an hour to get 5 good minutes of Mr. Black. The routine was filmed in 2012, so some of the comedy is dated. Still, the observations are witty and I laughed out loud over a few of the pearls.You've been warned.
If you don't know who Lewis Black is or have seen his stand-up before, then I must give you a few words of warning: DON'T let your young children or mother watch his routine. Now this is NOT because he's not funny--he's hilarious. But, he's also incredibly abrasive and scatters obscenities throughout his act. Now I don't usually care for all the cursing but he manages to use this when talking about things that really do drive us up a wall!In this installment, he talks about politicians and how they don't know how to deal with terrorists, how stupid and useless cellphones are, meeting Ringo Starr and MANY other things that make his mad...and boy, is he mad! Fortunately, he does warn you when the show begins--he WILL offend you and his language will appall you. But he's also funny. Not as funny as his next comedy special, "Lewis Black: Old Yeller--Live at the Borgata".
I recently watch another Lewis Black show and was quite taken by how it was not what I had expected. Yes he was still the angry personae that I know from bits here and there, but his material was good and he was consistent in his tone and pacing. At the start of In God We Rust, Lewis does a bit where he braces his audience for the show to come, stressing in particular that people should not assume they know what type of comedian he is and not take a bit they saw on Comedy Central as any indication of his style. This segment went on longer than necessary and was not as good as when I have seen Stewart Lee do similar material, but it did seem to confirm what I knew already from the previous show. Except it didn't.After this, Black plays much more on his angry style than the previous show. This is not a problem in principle for me since I enjoy his targeted and sharp rants on The Daily Show. Problem here is that he doesn't totally seem to have the material. He covers anger at airports, anger at modern mobile phones, stupid politicians (Bachmann and Palin of course), anger at Farmville, and so on. He is playing to a big crowd so perhaps this is why he only once or twice seems to challenge them – and even then he doesn't really present a case so much as push buttons. It is a shame because he can be really strong when building a sort of righteous anger routine which a focus and structure, but here he never really gets to that. The broad material does still work and I had a handful of decent laughs, but if I am honest it was a bit disappointing in the subject selection and the approach taken.