The original An Evening with Kevin Smith DVD was an absolute laugh riot, consistently and outrageously funny. The second time around the humor is not nearly as consistent, this time it's much more hit and miss. When it hits it's very good. When it misses things get rather dull. Basically, this is only ever going to be as good as the questions from the audience. If the questions are poor (and here more than a few of them are) you're left with some serious downtime where the program really loses steam. The original DVD had much more material to work with, taking bits and pieces from a number of different Smith Q&As. Here there are only two shows to draw from, one in Toronto and one in London, and there really is not enough good material to cover the four hour length of the DVD. Some of the questions do nothing but fill, and ultimately waste, time.
Another disappointment is that this DVD is a little too much about Kevin Smith's personal life, whereas the first one was much more about Kevin Smith's professional life and his dealings in Hollywood. There's nothing here to match those great stories from the first DVD about the likes of Prince and Tim Burton. Stories about Smith's relationship with his wife or his daughter's television viewing habits were never going to be as compelling as a story about Prince's lunacy. Smith still holds nothing back and is at times obviously trying his hardest to be outrageous. But it turns out it's a lot easier to laugh at a story about Prince than it is to laugh at a story about Smith's wife or Smith's daughter or, in one segment which surely had the old man rolling in his grave, Smith's deceased father. We expect Smith to be outrageous but, ewwwww, there is such a thing as too much information. This DVD has its moments (including the obligatory Jason Mewes appearances) but after the comic gold of the first edition this one is a bit of a disappointment.
