Kevin James: Irregardless

I will preface this by saying I'm not a huge fan of stand up. I like some of them but others I feel are trying way too hard. Like this one. I liked KOQ and when I saw Kevin had a special I decided to give it a whirl. When he was coming out and started rolling around on the floor I had a feeling this wasn't going to end well. It's just not very funny. I also think it's way too athletic with all the jumping around and frantically gesturing while making annoying sound effects. I'm sure plenty of people enjoy that kind of humor, but I guess I'm not one of them. He really lost me when he started talking about ripping the faces off of wild animals and eating it. I personally would much rather hear f-bombs than stuff like that. Yesterday I watched Gary Gulman's new special on Max and thought it was really funny so I'm not completely dead inside and do have a sense of humor. Just not for this.

I'm a huge Kevin James fan. I could watch King of Queens every day for the rest of my life. He made me laugh so hard on that show, constant entertainment. So I was really excited that he had a new stand up special and I had high hopes. Unfortunately, I think I only laughed once. I probably smiled a couple of times but that was it. It just wasn't funny. It wasn't that I was offended, as some other reviewers suggest. I just did not find it funny. It was mostly jokes about parenting that have already been done a million times and just wasn't anything fresh or interesting. He wasn't even funny with the physical bits like he was on KoQ. He seemed to be trying way too hard and I missed that effortless way he used to make me laugh. It's a disappointing no from me.

I never watched King of Queens when it was a hit show. I know he grew up in my neck of the woods, but not much more than that. I am not normally a big fan of Kevin James' standup, but this one is very good. He does a good job of talking in a relaxed and natural manner about parenting and about growing up in the 1970's. He manages to be very funny without being vulgar, or sexual. His storytelling ability is very good. I enjoyed how self-effacing he was. He does a good job of managing the stage and the audience. He has matured into a very good storyteller and a very good stand up comedian. I enjoyed it.

Somehow Kevin James went from the self depreciating sense of humor, to the approach that kids these days are lazy and parents are wimps. It's a bunch of old and tired rants about drinking from the garden hose and getting whipped with the belt by your old man. And then just an overly long complaint about how his wife talks too much. But the sad truth is that these jokes are as lazy as this next generation. There were very few personal stories here, and each punchline was stretched to make the material last an hour. There were no jokes about food, or material about going bald, or losing weight. I finished it out of respect for Kevin James because he's made me laugh so hard through the years that he's earned it. But sadly, there was nothing special or very funny about this new material. It needed to be retooled and polished before the special was made.

As a fan of Kevin's for many years I was shocked at how funny this special was. Starting off with a horrible premise about prediabetes and how we're free everything really was not that funny. We all understand the pre-diabetes means borderline and then he kept going on with the premise and then he went on to tell this story about hitting a deer in the same Cadence and story as Kevin Hart did with the raccoon. Felt uninspired, flat, unoriginal, and just not funny. Whole point of Comedy is to make people laugh and he failed in this one. He must be surrounded by tes men, as if he would have appeared review this with any of his other comedian friends they would have told him it was complete garbage. I feel bad for him.