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Vince Vaughn's Wild West Comedy Reviewed By Rich Drees
Well, fortunately, in 2005, Vince Vaughn did decide to tour most of the country with four up-an-coming comics, and he had the foresight to bring along a documentary camera crew headed up by Academy Award-winning director Ari Sandel to capture everything that happened. The result is Vince Vaughn’s Wild West Comedy Show, a vaudeville-style review which traveled over 6,000 miles to 30 cities over 30 days.
While it’s an obvious undercurrent, the film doesn’t dwell on the
fact that Vaughn’s name is the one on each theater marquee that is
getting the butts into the seats. While along the way the show is
joined on occasion by some of Vaughn’s previous cinematic co-stars,
it is really the strength of the four standup comics who carry both
the live show each night as well as the film itself. If the first
few minutes of Vince Vaughn's Wild West Comedy Show don't
capture you, hang on. The earliest portions shown of each comic’s
act is probably the weakest of all their material. The comedy only
goes uphill. All four comics are solid performers, on the cusp of
becoming nationally known. Of the four, the strongest two are
probably the energetic Bret Ernst and the babyfaced John Caparulo.
In addition to recording the each night’s show and chronicling the antics everyone gets up to on their tour bus, the film also touches on how such an intense schedule effects each of the performers. Used to working the smaller crowds found at the various LA comedy clubs where they regularly appear, the comics seem unsure and unused to playing the larger venues they find themselves in. One is visibly shaken by a drunken heckler during their first week out. Another has a crowd turn on him at the start of a routine but gamely plows through it anyway. But by the end of the month, they all seem much more confident playing the venues that they will be playing as their careers progress. |
When you are a big-time star the likes of, say just for the sake of
argument, actor Vince Vaughn, you get to do a lot of things that
ordinary people might not get a chance to do. For example, say you
wanted to get together with four standup comedian friends and tour
the country for a month performing in some nice-sized theaters; you
would have a tough time arranging it all. But, if you’re Vince
Vaughn, to use our hypothetical example, it would be no trouble at
all.