Jim Gaffigan: King Baby (Comedy Central/Paramount DVD)

 

Picture: C+     Sound: C     Extras: B+     Concert: B-

 

 

Back when I was in high school a friend of mine owned Robin Williams Live on Broadway on DVD. He thought it was hilarious and I agreed.  In sum total I’ve now seen it four times and you know what?  That’s enough.

 

Sure Jim Gaffigan is hilarious, but I guarantee you can watch King Baby over and over again on Comedy Central for free, begging the question why you might pay $20+ to watch it over and over again on DVD.  Granted, according to the back cover, this release contains over a half-hour of material that they cut out of the Comedy Central special, but if you can tell then that means you’ve already seen both versions and you’ve either already bought it or you’ve already seen it twice so why bother buying it?

 

The other incentive to buy the disc is the extras.  The three episodes of Pale Force alone are pretty compelling, plus four episodes of Our Massive Planet.  The only problem is that these episodes, while extremely funny, are also equally short.  The rest of the extras are decent but repetitive, consisting mostly of promotional material for the tour, which, if you enjoy standup enough to be reading this review, you have probably already seen when they aired at every commercial break for Friday Night Standup anyway.

 

The widescreen (about 1.77:1) picture is on par with broadcast quality, but for standup it seems almost entirely irrelevant.  As long as the picture is neither too bad nor too good so as to distract from the jokes, it really shouldn’t matter.  The sound quality is a bit more important, and the Dolby Digital 5.1 or 2.0 is just fine.  If you really listen for it, it is a tad soft.  But honestly, if you’re listening that closely to the sound quality rather than paying attention to the jokes, then you’re probably already regretting spending money on this disc.

 

In all fairness though, I think that that’s unlikely.  Jim Gaffigan is a funny guy and I can’t imagine anyone not getting a chuckle out of his routine.  My reservations about buying standup aside, if you’re really that big a fan of Gaffigan and hope to spread the good word to your friends and relatives, then there’s definitely enough extra incentive to pay for this disc.  On the other hand, if you just saw his Hot Pockets routine on YouTube and thought he was pretty okay then I’d suggest you just stick to YouTube and Comedy Central and not pay money for a DVD you probably won’t watch more than twice.

 

 

-   Matthew Carrick