Wild West Comedy Show: 30 Days & 30 Nights - Hollywood to the Heartland

Although I tried to forget it, I remember actually paying to see this when it was first released. I also remember thinking to myself..."Maybe Vince actually got his hands on some pretty funny talent. THis looks like it could be fun!" Absolutely not. Worst assumption I could've possibly made was thinking this was actually going to be a "funny" experience for me. I hardly remembered the dragged out jokes that were in this film until i tried viewing it again the other night. I figured that maybe, just maybe i missed something the first time and since i was in the comfort of home it'd be a little better the next go around, but yet again...with another bad assumption I was WRONG. Save your time...save your money...because this film represents and is all that is wrong with the words: NOT FUNNY.

In 2005, Vince Vaughn organizes a traveling road show starting from Hollywood. They would do 30 shows in 30 cities traveling across the country. He is joined by friends Jon Favreau, Justin Long and several standup comics. Along the way, there are special guests like Dwight Yoakam and Peter Billingsley.

The comedians aren't that funny. They've got a few lines but they aren't that funny. It would help for their personal stories if I like their sets more. It's nice to see Yoakam play and Peter Billingsley talk about his early friendship during the filming an anti-steroid abuse PSA. The behind the scenes stuff is more compelling. The self-doubt is interesting. Vince comes off as a nice friendly guy. There isn't enough on the humorous side but it does come with a side of humanity.

I just got back from a free preview of this movie at school and I thoroughly enjoyed it. I was laughing almost the whole time. Listening to them talk about themselves and each other helped to gain an insight to the tour. Also, being able to hear their back stories helped to understand where their material came from. After the viewing, Bret Ernst came out for a Q&A with the audience and he's a great guy. He's very humble about this movie and what it's doing for not only his career, but for the career of the rest of the guys on the tour. I would highly recommend this movie to anyone who wants to laugh. This isn't a straight up comedy movie, but a documentary about the tour with parts of the tour mixed in. It's a funny movie with heart that shows what these guys go through to entertain us to make us laugh.

In Vince Vaughn's Wild West Comedy Show: 30 Days & 30 Nights—Hollywood to the Heartland, if the four relatively unknown comics (a "Guido," an Ohio rube, an Arab, and a non-descript guy) accompanying Vaughn on a 30 day tour of 30 cities had been better, the documentary would have been better as well. Sadly this tepid montage of the trip is rarely funny, rarely imaginative, although the infectious good will of Vaughn saves it from total banality.

Jerry Seinfeld's Comedian (2002) and the arch Aristocrats (2005) have far more humorous moments while also revealing the humanity of the performers. Vaughn tries with limited success to show the heart of the comics between acts, but, alas, not one is interesting enough to have more than a beer with.

As with most of these documentaries, there are only snippets of the acts and then cutting to another performer or a personal note. Thus, we can never understand fully why a comedian will or will not make the big time. One thing I do know, this January graveyard toss off will not make it big time. I'll ask you in December if you think it should be nominated for best documentary; you'll haveto research it on IMDb to remember.

In 2005, actor Vince Vaughn gathered together a handful of comedians from The Comedy Store in Hollywood - Ahmed Ahmed, John Caparulo, Bret Ernst and Sebastian Maniscalco - built an extended stand-up show around their acts, then took it on the road for a 30-city-in-30-day whirlwind tour across the United States, starting in Los Angeles and ending in Chicago, with 28 stops in between. Vaughn also brought a few documentary filmmakers along for the ride, the result being "Vince Vaughn's Wild West Comedy Show," an at best fair-to-middling account of that event.

Some of the backstage stuff is of moderate interest - particularly the comics offering a free show to some Hurricane Katrina refugees and Ernst's touching reflections on his older brother who died of AIDS. But one can only hope that we're not being treated to the best of the on-stage material here. For if truth be told, there aren't nearly as many laughs to be gleaned from these performances as one might expect given the caliber of talent involved. At best, the routines elicit a few hearty chuckles, along with a surprising number of humor-deprived dead spots. The behind-the-scenes activities are marginally more entertaining (the interviews with the boys' families are sometimes quite informative and amusing), but the movie doesn't provide nearly the depth of insight into the world of standup comedy that, say, Jerry Seinfeld's "Comedian" did a few years back.

Still the guys in the group are likable enough and their camaraderie ultimately becomes infectious, earning the movie at least a lukewarm recommendation, especially for devotees of the subject.