SpuffyWeb Sadly Over-hyped

Raetsonwe Redundant and unnecessary.

RipDelight This is a tender, generous movie that likes its characters and presents them as real people, full of flaws and strengths.

Bea Swanson This film is so real. It treats its characters with so much care and sensitivity.

Martin Teller About 10 years ago, I listened to David Cross' album "Shut Up, You F*cking Baby" over and over and over again. Around the same time, I watched this behind-the-scenes documentary and filed it away until now. Revisiting it today, I'm rather disappointed. Cross often comes off like a petty, childish douchebag... most blatantly during the Nashville incident, but there are several other parts where the condescending bitterness that works for him onstage makes him a very unsympathetic person offstage. The dumb hipsters in the audience don't help matters either (and is Cross trying to make fun of these guys? those are his fans, right?). The best stuff here is the material you can hear on the CD.

bob the moo David Cross' day job is interrupted by an urgent call to his bosses office. Once there he is confronted by a shocking DVD that his boss discovered under the bed of his youngest son. It is not, as Cross assumes, gay pornography or even just straight pornography but rather a DVD of Cross doing his other job – standup comedy. With his boss concerned about the material Cross does and the company he keeps, he uses clips from the DVD to illustrate his point.Like many others, I came to Cross from Arrested Development and was really happy with what I found with his stand-up material that I saw. So my desire to consume more of his material brought me to this film with the impression that it would be a stand-up show. So OK, initially my reservations with the film can be based on the fact that I expected something from it that it did not propose to be. After this I settled into the film as an "on the road" film of Cross on tour, with as much focus on the goings-on as on the action on the stage (if not more in fact) Meeting it on these terms the film is rarely more than "OK" because it appears to lack reason or structure beyond showing the many weird characters that Cross meets as he travels. Many of these are hecklers and others are just muppets who try and befriend him whether he wants them to or not. This is never interesting enough to carry as much of the film as is dedicated to it and I tired of it long before it finished.The stand-up stuff is likewise focused on people giving him trouble or things not going totally his way. Again this is not without value but is certainly not worth the amount of variations on it that we see. The rest of it (outside of the fictional work-place framing) is a mix of people babbling at the camera, joking around with David and so on – none of it particularly interesting. All of this is hindered further by the rather grainy film and often poor sound recording which, while part of the material being what it is, doesn't make for an easy experience when you're struggling to hear what is being said.For fans it is interesting enough to see Cross putting in work for his craft rather than living some remote form of stardom, but even they will find this film labouring that point without a lot else on offer. As others have said already, it is important that you don't judge David Cross by this film because his stand-up is much, much better than this film suggests. Let America Laugh would be an interest DVD extra if it was a lot shorter because, as a film in its own right, it doesn't do enough to justify the 90 minute running time.

nolafilm A realistic, unflattering, honest look at David's 2002? tour. Contrary to some other viewer comments, he didn't seem to be making fun of his fans to me, rather, he just let the video speak for itself. If people came across as stupid or obnoxious, it wasn't because of David. The dvd was billed as a behind the scenes look at his tour, and that's exactly what it delivered. I actually felt bad for David, watching him have to deal with the Little Rock audience and a few of the other fans, who just struck me as average everyday, clueless people - with or without David's commentary. I watched it with a budding standup comic friend who was shocked by the often sad reality of stand-up touring, even for a very funny guy like David Cross. If you're a David Cross fan, or curious about what stand-up performers go through on the road, definitely check this out.

calle-2 I'm a big David Cross fan, and not only because of Mr Show, so I was very much looking forward to this DVD which would be a video diary of his adventures on his second stand-up tour. It starts out beautifully with an incident in Nashville, TN, and I figured if it would continue like that, then I'd be in for a real treat. However, the longer the movie moves on, the more it seems like David is a pretty mean character making fun of others in a rather mean elitist type of way. Sure, there are a lot of losers in the movie, and hecklers are put down every time, but I don't like some of the condescending behaviour David shows. All in all it is pretty funny though, so I won't try to stop you from getting this if you're a fan. But if you're expecting a warm and fuzzy kind of guy a la many Mr Show characters, then you won't get what you're looking for.