Robin Williams: Weapons of Self Destruction

Robin Williams "Weapons of Self Destruction" is a live stand-up comedy film. Robin Williams covers a vast array of subject matter in this 90 minute concert film. Many of the jokes are funny and Robin's humor may be a little wilder than you would expect.

I think the film is a bit slow at times, but many of the antidotes and jokes are quite funny. My favorite part is when Robin Is doing impressions. He really excels at his impressions. They are spot on.

I picked up a DVD of this at a local thrift store for a buck. Now that I have watched it, I'll probably donate it to the library.

Weapons of Self Destruction is fun as a one time watch, but it's not amusing enough that I would rewatch it.

I recently managed to catch Robin Williams' big return to HBO and I was looking forward to some typical manic humour from him, which is pretty much what he delivers. The problem is that he still needs good material to deliver in this way and there are substantial chunks of this special when the material is not as strong as he should be doing. He dabbles into political comedy but he does so in a manner that makes him come over like he is trying to do someone else's act – it just doesn't sit well with the rest of the stuff he is doing. Put with this the fact that a lot of the material he is doing is not topical – I know I saw this several months after it aired in the US but even in December 2009 some of this stuff was done and done. It is still pretty funny but it is not as hilarious as he is trying to make it, nor as funny as the audience reaction captured suggests.

Likewise some of his stuff is very crude and some of the laughs seem to be coming from the stuff he is saying being shocking. Of course this is nothing need in comedy and there is always a place for those who say the unsayable but do so in a very clever and well-delivered fashion – but this is not happening here. Williams does have some great observations with this stuff but mostly he is playing it a bit too obvious and childish for my tastes. Fortunately neither the political stuff nor the crude stuff makes up the majority of the show. There are other things in here and some of them are relevant to him and personal to him; his bits on alcoholism and drugs I found very funny but also well informed and it is just a shame he could not have done more from that direction rather than miming out his bodily functions with as much regularity as he did (pun unintentional).

There is one thing above all else that makes this (admittedly too long) special work though, even as it dips at times and that is the man himself. Williams manic stuff has always worked well for me and since Mork has been his trademark and there is no sign that he has lost his touch there because his delivery and work is impressive. He nails the better material with this approach and he also carries the weaker stuff, taking the audience with him even when the joke he is doing is not that funny. The only slight wobble he has in that regard is when he does quite a lot of racial/national stereotypes and accents in one tight segment – you can feel the audience not really being sure if it is something they should be laughing at, but by force of his personality alone Williams takes them with him right through that mire.

Is "Weapons" a great comedy show? Well to be honest no, too much of the material feels a little "base" in its content but Williams just about holds it together by sheer will and presence. He carries the audience and the viewer through the weaker material, moving quickly and frantically to distract us and provides plenty of good laughs on the stronger material to make us focus on that. Not quite great but he is undoubtedly good at what he does.

This comedy set is fine for people who laugh at any drug joke or penis joke, no matter how old or poorly constructed, but Robin Williams used to be so much better, more original and with a greater range of schtick. It's hard not to notice how often he punctuates a gag by announcing that it's "number one" of a series of observations. (Usually he does provide another but without numbering it.) His material about growing older rang true, and it was certainly fresher than a Jimmy Stewart imitation or a talking-vagina gag (both of which he does resort to), but I suppose that to focus on approaching the age of 60 would be to lose much of the audience-- at least the audience that we see photographed, who seem to be half Robin's age.

It would be a safe bet to claim mercurial funny man Robin Williams hasn't been funny since the last century. Age and stale material repackaged with the same zany but winded nuances stopped being amusing some time back. With a film career on life support Williams returns to the place where he got his start, stand-up, and promptly falls on his ass.

From the outset Williams sweats and shrinks before our eyes in a hallowed cavernous DC auditorium as he huffs and puffs his way about the stage with the same routine worn paper thin by decades of the same shtick on endless talk shows and incorporated into films that won him critical praise. In Destruction he leaps on today's topics with the same manic enthusiasm he did in his youth but the novelty and Puckish charm are long gone and instead we get a sloven heavily caffeinated, perspiring old man where the cutesy gets creepy.

Williamsis somewhere between Ork and Dangerfield and incapable of handling it with Rodney's unique savoir faire. It is a cringing performance to witness, made even more evident by the audience response where the only thing that brings down the house is the wistful sentimentality for this over the hill repetitive dinosaur who now has to resort to dick and pussy jokes to get forced laughs from hipsters as he enters and exits, albeit a decade or two too late.

"Robin Williams: Weapons of Self Destruction" is a hoot. Mr. Williams delivers rock-solid jokes with great punchlines and with lots of funny contents.

If you have seen the 2002 show "Live On Broadway" and enjoyed that, then you most definitely want to check out this 2009 show as well. Only one small problem about this 2009 show is that some of the jokes from 2002 make a re-appearance, which was a tad tame, if you have already seen the 2002 show, but other than that, Robin Williams delivers a great show and laughs.

It should be said that Robin Williams is quite fond of the F-word in his stand-up shows, so take a notice of warning to that prior to sitting down to watch "Robin Williams: Weapons of Self Destruction", because if you are offended by that word, this might not really be something for you.

I was thoroughly entertained by Williams in this show, as I was in the 2002 show. He is a great comedian and doesn't sugarcoat anything, he talks straight from the heart (and mind) and doesn't put on any velvet gloves. I like his direct approach and the way that he delivers one solid joke after another, but at the same time manages to keep the show fresh and up-to-date with things that are up in the media and things that needs to be made fun of.

"Robin Williams: Weapons of Self Destruction" is a great addition to any fan of either Robin Williams or the stand-up comedy genre in general.