Matt Rife: Lucid - A Crowd Work Special

Off-the-heels of his Natural Selection flop, Netflix delivers Lucid to try and recapture the weird enigma of Matt Rife. Rife's sudden rise to fame from social media shorts basically had exchanges like this:

Matt: Where do you work?

Guest: Victoria's Secret

Matt: (ADHD screaming) Oh my God! You work at Victoria's Secret?!?!

Audience: *Seal noises of middle-aged woman cackling*

That's pretty much the gist of it. It follows much of the same generic crowd work form factor as Akaash Singh joking about Indian IT workers or Phil Hanley joking about special needs teachers. There is little new or particularly interesting to see with Lucid. If you're not into the same, you probably won't like this special. If you are one of Matt's fan, chances are you will still be disappointed Lucid wasn't a continuous highlight reel.

We've been fans of Matt for like 5 or 6 years now. He has done amazing Crowd work over the years. But the special fell flat. It was horrible crowd work I thought. I think the problem was he trying to have a theme, dreams, and it just did not work. It was not spontaneous ...it just didn't work. Crowd work has to be spontaneous. (jennifer kirson) Over the years he's done amazing crowd work. But to do a show about crowd work. With little edits, then you're put on the spot. Maybe editing would of it made a better? I don't know. But I do know we love Matt rife, we always will, he's very talented, this special just fell short I felt.

The reviews here are too negative in my opinion. It wasn't the greatest comedy special I've ever seen on netflix, but it definitely had me laughing more than most of the specials that pop up on my feed. Yes, the audience felt a little like it was hand-picked for a crowd work special, and some of the more wacky stories distract from the fact that Matt can find the humor in more mundane details, but it was still funny and Matt still managed to find humor and make quick jokes that I definitely wouldn't be able to think of. Some of the reviews here almost scared me off, so after watching it I figured I'd come add my own.

Compared to what I've seen on Tik-Tok, this crowd work special wasn't good. Many of the "jokes" weren't laughable and members of the audience seemed like they were falling asleep.

I mean, I like him as a comedian, but this special wasn't for me. Plus, wearing his own merch seemed weird to me. It seems like he's trying to hard to be liked. I'm not sure what his full show is like, but just going off of this, it seems pretty lackluster. Dry humor sometimes doesn't work for people.

My rating this a 2/5 stars is because I couldn't even make it 15 minutes into it. Plus, all of the cursing! Too much of the F-Bomb.

Matt Rife has has quite the wild ride when it comes to fame. Thanks to tik tok and other forms of social media he shot into the stratosphere because of his crowd work. His shows became the hottest tickets in town as he filled out arenas across the country. But he let it go to his head, let his foot off the gas, made some character canceling mistakes, and quickly became one of the most hated comedians out there after a Netflix special that didn't land. I will admit that I was one of those people that was done with him after all of that, but I have to say that I admire his effort in trying to make a comeback. He does it by going back to his crowd work roots and launching something that is somewhat revolutionary to try to move his craft forward and salvage is career. While I had to admit I would watch another one if it came out, I also thought it fell a little flat. The crowd was too excited to get their wild stories out there which detracted from it, but there were some funny parts. My rating is really a 5 with an extra point for originality.