Matt Rife: Natural Selection

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.

I've heard lots of comedians talk about taking one year to write and perfect their special, I've heard them talk about how to approach controversial topics, or for example - when is too soon.

A general consensus is that you'll be forgiven for a lot, if you're funny.

Sorry Matt, this is simply not funny.

The jokes went way too long, didn't deliver, highlighted your youth and inexperience, and sounded clueless and immature.

Bummer. Let's see if you can recover from this one.

Maybe now is the time to look inward instead of double-downing on the stupidity & childishness.

It is simply: not funny.

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.

As has been said with other reviews: you throw this guy into a room with 50 people with a natural back and forth and he will crowd work like few others can. He has an effortlessly quick wit and charm that seems natural for the stage. However, choreographing a long form special without the ability to crowd work ruins the formula he's famous for. That is not a knock on the guy, crowd work is as technical a skill as crafting a routine but Netflix, and its restrictions, is not where he shines. At least, not right now. I look forward to seeing how he develops as a comic over time and how his work matures but presently he seems to trying to hard to break the fake binds that a lot of present comics complain about. This odd lie that you can't have an edge to your jokes without being cancelled. You certainly can..... They just need to actually land as jokes.

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!!