Kristen Schaal: Live at the Fillmore (2013)

Each character in this movie — down to the smallest one — is an individual rather than a type, prone to spontaneous changes of mood and sometimes amusing outbursts of pettiness or ill humor.

There are moments in this movie where the great movie it could've been peek out... They're fleeting, here, but they're worth savoring, and they happen often enough to make it worth your while.

This is a dark and sometimes deeply uncomfortable drama

Blistering performances.

Kristen Schaal does her first Comedy Central one-hour special at the Fillmore in San Francisco. She's best at doing awkward girl with deliberate misunderstandings and known as a contributor on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart. The special is awkwardly written and not all together successful. A perfect example is the pot and spoon bit. The basic concept is hilarious but she fails to write an ending for it. The best bit has to be the taint monologue.She walks off a third of the way in. It begins a long slow slide to the finish with the concept that her show is awkward and not quite working out. It's almost experimental theater in nature. The little girl roasting her and the crickets aren't actually funny. It would be odd enough for nervous laughs in shorter segments but when it's this long, it becomes simply awkward.

I have to agree with jasobres that this is un-funny. Obviously a number of people enjoy her routine, but I've never found shock-schlock to be funny. Constant comments about camel-toes, vaginas and penises do not a comedy act make. There is a natural sense of "this person is funny" that a comedian needs that is simply missing from this act. Her expressions aren't funny, her humor isn't funny; it's like a 1-hour set of the worst of SNL. I know that humor is subjective and everyone has their individual tastes, but this performance didn't elicit even a chuckle within the first 10 minutes (which is as much as I could stomach). I figure if a comic doesn't get a laugh within the first 60 seconds they're off to a bad start. Continued such failure is a bad sign and a waste of viewer time.

Don't get me wrong, I'm a fan of Kristen Schaal's work as an actress and voice actress from her work on Flight of the Concords, the Daily Show, and Bob's Burgers. But as a stand-up comedian, she falters. The only reason I'm not giving this one star is because the first half of the special was all hit while the rest, after she does a lazy eye joke, fell flat. Not even a cameo by her Bob's Burgers co-star Eugene Mirman could save this. I know a lot of people are defending her and saying she was flopping on purpose a la Andy Kaufman, but at least Kaufman was able to save his set by ending on a dead-on Elvis impression. All Schaal has got is being upstaged by a 7- year-old girl and doing a bit about her absent dancing horse.