I didn't quite recognize Jamie Kennedy. After looking up his credits, it makes sense. I've seen a handful of things that he's been in, but most of them are his older credits (Bowfinger? I'll keep an eye out next time I watch it).
At first, the focus of the documentary is fairly entertaining. No one really liked hecklers, and the variety of ways that comics deal with them is fascinating. For the infinite possibilities that a heckler has to taunt with, even though most of them are some variation on "you suck," it's amazing that so many people are able to pull off coming back with a relevant retort right on time.
The second act focuses more heavily on complaining about film critics. This was actually the point at which Kennedy lost me. Not entirely, since I actually found most of the comments to be interesting. The more we reward critics for being as outrageously negative as possible, and the more popular those types of reviews get, the less likely that anyone who should see a review does.
Sorry, that was an awkward sentence. I know that next to no one sees my posts. That doesn't bother me. But I treat these write-ups as much more of a personal matter to me. The few instances that I've really said how much I didn't like a movie - Sheltered, Against the Dark, The Terror Experiment, The Amazing Spider-Man, and Pool Party - none of these were absolutely unwatchable. And I'm pretty sure that I made no personal attacks with any of them. On the off chance that Timothy M. Snell, director of Pool Party, reads this review and feels hurt, I'm sorry man. I just don't think I'm the right audience for your picture.
There were two sequences in this movie that stood out. One of them is the footage of Uwe Boll fighting critics. I had heard of this, and it seemed like a childish response to criticism. To be fair, some viewers are overcome by Boll's sensibilities. I don't think fighting them is going to make them think his movies are any better. There was something creepy about seeing Boll punching these people. Some of them really pretty young.
The other scene was early in the movie, when two guys outside a stand-up are called back in to discuss their criticism of Kennedy's performance. We don't have any sense of if they've actually done some heckling, or they just complained about the show afterward. This seems to be a scene where Kennedy asks them what they didn't like about his performance, and then complains that they aren't comedians, so they shouldn't complain. This seems especially strange, because as far as I can tell, the gag running up to it is Kennedy onstage doing the old joke about how country music is all about people losing things. A gag I've been familiar with since sometime in the 80s. I would also feel embarrassed for any comic trying to do a segment on that.
I fully understand. I don't bounce back from most criticism I get.
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