Actors: Jim Breuer
Directors: Jay Chapman
Rated: NR (Not Rated)
Studio: IMAGE ENTERTAINMENT
DVD Release Date: November 26, 2013
Run Time: 58 minutes
Our Score: 3.5 out of 5 stars
At the beginning of this special, Jim Breuer questions himself about how he should do his latest stand-up special. He does this with multiple impersonations. From Joe Pesci to Ozzy Osbourne. It seems like an odd way to begin his latest special. A moment the live audience won’t see from his dressing room. It’s even more bizarre because it’s not necessarily funny, but if you don’t listen to metal, then you’re not gonna find too much to laugh at in the first 20 minutes.
I’m someone who owns every Iron Maiden, Metallica and Slayer album. Sadly though, I’ve only seen Slayer live. So when he kicks things off by talking about becoming an aging metalhead, he has my full attention. Jim Breuer has always had hard rock and metal as a staple of his stand-up, but this time around he’s hit his 40’s. He compares his usual suburban outings, dressing up and watching musicals, to convincing his wife to see Metallica and surviving the madness of Slayer fans. Just so you’re not too out of the loop, he cleverly compares fans seeing Eddie in Iron Maiden to children watching the plush children’s music group, the Wiggles.
If that’s not your cup of tea, he manages to tell the stories of life. The pitfalls of becoming a father, a “jungle safari” and talking about those unnecessary conversations he has with other parents about why his children don’t own a cell phone. He’s very skillful at weaving his stories and comically acting out the folks in his scenarios. He makes sure to complete his stories with Michael Winslow style, microphone induced sound effects. He manages to mouth everything he can from guttural noises to horns. Instead of joke after joke, it’s more like he’s laying out real and possible scenarios and tells it like a story. He really gets into it making full use of the stage to act out.
There doesn’t appear to be an overall theme to the stand-up, but most of his stand-ups that I’ve watched didn’t seem to have one. If there is an idea to this, it’s about how aging has changed his perspective on many things. He could change his stand-up. He could become more relatable. Maybe he could swear more or not swear at all. Those are the questions he poses at the beginning, but by the end when he recounts the day he decided to stand-up, it becomes clear. He loves what he’s done and there’s no reason to change now.
As a metalhead, I found it kind of pathetic the way that Breur, a self-described metal head, seemed completely unfamiliar with the concept of a moshpit, or what a crowd at a metal show was like.