Jenny Slate: Stage Fright

I felt this was it's own form of art. Silly and awkward, with highs and lows, it felt like a wonderful exploration of a chaotic mind. While it's not laugh-out-loud the whole time, it's authentic and I really left feeling like I would look forward to seeing what she does next.

Firstly, I have always found Jenny Slate 'adorkable', so take any of my comments with a grain of salt.

Her sense of humour to me has always felt awkward and probably objectively funny in a quirky way. I admire her candor and openness to make herself more approachable in this special. There are some genuine moments to be had but much of her humour would be lost on the vast majority.

I grinned through most of the set, but never really laughed audibly at the content. The rating denotes her efforts despite not quite landing a broad stand-up comedic audience.

Note: I find it best to give an objective constructive opinion rather than be butt-hurt over something I had zero input into.

I love Jenny Slate. Absolutely love her and I love just watching her perform but this sickness of performers that do stand up and speak so much like reality show stars where they say 'like' constantly makes it difficult to watch. It's just too much. And it may seem like a minor gripe but it honestly is challenging. But if you enjoy Chris D'Elia and can take hearing 'like' upwards of three times in a single sentence, you might like this a lot.

Lately I've been watching quite alot of stand-up comedians and most of the time it was from good to very good. Everybody has a different sense of humor, and everybody has his own style to bring it to the audience. With the show of Jenny Slate I was disappointed though, not very funny, or at least not to me. To her it was obviously funny as she enjoyed it much more than anyone else. Nothing wrong with that, I guess we just don't have the same sense of humor. On top of that we get to see some footage from her family and from her youth. I'm pretty sure her family and herself will enjoy it very much when they will watch it over but for us, the audience, it's just boring. I'm afraid hat this will be the only stand-up comedy I will watch from her.

I'll preface this by saying I think Jenny Slate is a talented actor and and incredible voice-over actor. I have followed her career and enjoy just about all she does.

That being said, I found this difficult to watch. I wanted to like it, but it felt amateurish and awkward. And not particularly funny at all. I know this wasn't billed as pure stand up per se, but for me (as all reviews are just opinions) this isn't her realm. Stand up takes years to master, and putting together a "set" takes lots of work and re-work, trying out material on audiences and making adjustments and timing is key. This felt more like stream of consciousness with a few pre-planned anecdotes. It felt clear these were unchartered waters.

I see that some people vibed with it. She is intriguing (i'd love to have a beer and conversation with her) and and her quirkiness, along with some home footage and interviews were enough to be entertained.

I did note at least one person thinking the negative feedback thus far is based on taking a jab at the patriarchy and government. Yeah, someone is always offended by something, but I'm a white dude and thought they were cool sentiments. Just didn't work for me overall.

I'll keep watching and rooting for Jenny, but my guess is, the consensus will be that this experiment won't be considered one of her successes; in a career filled with them.