Matt Rife: Natural Selection

I can't tell you how disappointing this is my girlfriend and I really enjoy the clips of him we see on Instagram and I actually waited a full week so we can watch this together. I can't tell you how cringey and bad the special is. Granted I only made it about 20 minutes in so it could have improved markedly at some point but I highly doubt it. I swear to God I think we giggled at one thing in that period and it was only because it related to something we had just had a conversation about. I can't tell if the clips I see on Instagram are more about his ability to interact with the crowd which I think he's really good at but his jokes are just Bland and flat and appear to be just rehashed from other comedians. Beautiful is chiseled Jaw can only take him so far and I feel like this special was bad enough where he won't even get to implode like a Dane Cook at a later date. Truly absolute garbage from the start to well I guess not finish, but you know what I mean. I wasn't looking to hate here at all trust me I really thought this was going to be awesome I was pretty excited and what a let down.

Okay, I have laughed too hard with this guy on TikTok too many times but this is really bad, the first 20 minutes can easily make you turn it off, and beyond that it gets better but it's still bad.

I can accept that some comedians can only shine in a smaller an warmer crowd, but I can't imagine someone writing this script and thinking "this will do well". The stories are so long, uninteresting, and barely believable, and by the time the joke hits you're just sitting there with a straight face. By the 40 minute mark you'll just be waiting for it to end.

It's better that they stop promoting this and then try a second time next year, because I don't think many people will be watching a second special if they watch this.

Having watched him on social media and seen his funny clips, I was surprised that there was a lot of backlash against this show, much of it about certain jokes that some said were misogynist. So, I decided to look and see.

The jokes many claim were misogyny were rather tame compared to much of the harder hitting comedians out there, and I'd use Dave Chapelle as a comparison as he's said way worse about practically everybody in my view, as have many British comedians.

The problem with Matt Rife's Netlfix special is it starts with a standing ovation, which is really odd and scripted it seems. Then he speaks and I didn't recognise him as the same person because he seemed to be doing an impersonation of the dudes in Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure, where every second word is dude and everything is rad. It's simply embarrassing to watch as he's trying to be something he's not: ghetto and hood.

The nerves were evident and he wasn't natural or relaxed and probably had too much expectation placed on him by the audience, producers and most likely himself. If he's going to recover from this, he should do what he does well and rip the hell out of himself for this dud of a performance. And drop being a dude, dude?

This unfortunately fell short with me. I have been a fan on Matt Rife's for a while now but unfortunately seeing this special turned out to be not special at all.

Matt Rife has made a real name for himself via social media and his crowd work which is phenomenal and some of the best I have seen as of late.

In this special it's focussed on his actual set and not his crowd work as obviously crowd work completely differs from show to show but your general set does not.

At the end of this special you see quick clips of Matt Rife doing his crowd work after his set has finished and in those short clips is where you can see the audience laughing the loudest.

We want to see you engaging with your audience.

All in all looking forward to seeing how Matt does progress as a comedian.

What happened?? I was soo looking forward to this but halfway in and Im feeling so underwhelmed. Im a big fan of his but it is not what I expected. His jokes really fell flat, most gave a general nod but definitely not what I was expecting. He got religious very quickly, some of his "jokes" are offensive, and overall not up to par. Which is disappointing because his humor is usually pretty great when he interacts with the audience. But he doesnt do that. Instead he makes a couple of jokes that were good and the rest are horrible. No talking to the crowd at all, he took that away which is a big mistake. Thats really why people were interested in him in the first place. Giving comedy an edge and standing out. Matt-you really let your fans down; we expected more!!