Matt Rife: Lucid - A Crowd Work Special

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.

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.

I went into this today ready to laugh as I usually do when watching his crowd work on the internet short videos. Of course, sometimes he makes me uncomfortable and sometimes really uncomfortable. Still, I wanted to watch and laugh. And I did a few times. And I was really uncomfortable a few times. But mainly, I was ready for it to be over because I found it very limiting. The idea of dreams as the focal point of his entire show just stifled anything that went beyond that box he put his show in. It went beyond a few times, yes. But I really think I would have enjoyed a pure stand up routine instead of all crowd work. He's funny and personable, but this time it just didn't completely work for me.

Matt his crowd work is usually good but you can't build a full show around it. You just don't get enough entertaining scenario's. So, how to fix it? Stage a couple people. The first mom-daughter part felt fully staged. I don't buy it for one second.

Other interactions were quite basic. Not very entertaining. Some of the "regular" comedy he does in between is more of the same of his last specials his stand up just isn't very good, his crowd work usually is. The clips online are short clips out of full shows and only the actually funny ones get uploaded but this shows that you can't force that in a show.

Was listening to it on a walk but if I wasn't I would have turned it off after 15 minutes.

Lazy and he really isn't that funny. The crowd work is so staged and scripted. I also don't find him very talented and what I saw, was quite boring. I had a hard time getting through the first 20 minutes and felt like I should have been reimbursed for my time. When he's not crowd baiting, he is just talking too much. If I could give this a lower rating, I would. I recommend passing on this and finding a stand up comedian with talent. Don't waste your time. Again, it's so scripted and mediocre I'm surprised they even decided to air this on Netflix. Turn the channel, read a book, take up a hobby and pass on this.