Matt Rife: Lucid - A Crowd Work Special

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.

I will admit I only lasted about 15 minutes. The first bit with the mother-daughter seemed totally staged. It had to have been staged and that just seems like cheating and a gimmick. I really like him in his short videos and he does sell out. Tried to get tickets to see him while he was in Maine. They even had to add a couple of shows because they sold out so quickly. But maybe he sticks to his own material and doesn't do crowd work. There's no way you can convince me that that mother and daughter were not planted there. This just absolutely no way it's believable so for that reason I turned it off and came here to leave a review.

Crowd work is improv. Improv is scary and hard. Matt is brilliant at it...seriously, and looks so comfortable in front of a crowd, who is always judging you, and he is able to completely hold court. You have to be whip smart and have a varied diet of history, current events, politics, general gossip, etc, and Matt has all that at a young age.

I just don't get that some people hate him...he's so personable and funny. I know he's be accused of punching down at women in his routines but there is none of that here. It's super fun to watch him play off the crowd and seems to even be overly respectable to everyone involved.

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.