Chris D'Elia: No Pain

I want to say first that I believe D'elia may be one of the funniest people alive in off the cuff, conversational comedy. As a podcast guest and on Instagram, he is probably in my top five comedians. This is why it pains me to write this review, but I think he needs to hear this criticism in order to level up in the stand up game. The reality is that the podcasting circle of comedians will always attract an audience at shows, because they have become personalities. Therefore, the true and honest feedback they will get about the art and craft of stand up will be limited.

Chris' special is unwatchable. D'elia is using the same strange, frat boy voice in his latest special than he did in his first. There has been no evolution. No relaxing into it. It sounds very forced, and honestly the jokes are pretty hacky. I can't for the life of me understand why he doesn't try to bring his real life persona onto the stage. It seems like he is actively targeting the teenage market, which is fine, but he has the potential to be so much more. Do yourself a favour, get off Netflix and download Louis CK's latest special or find an old copy of Colin Quinn's stuff. Or go check out the comics coming out of the UK and Ireland, who seem to be on a much higher level than the LA comedy scene.

Whatever the reason, like NOTHING landed. I didn't find a minute of this special funny and had to watch the whole thing due to my wife.

I wanted to like this. I like Chris D'Elia on podcasts and in interviews. The kindest thing I can say about the special is that it came in under an hour. Should it have lasted any longer I might have gotten angry but as it stays under an hour I'm just wildly disappointed. He mentions in the special that this is a great time for comedy and all I could think when he said that was that this would have been a great time for him to try doing some. I watched the entire show hoping for something, even a single bit, to save it, and that bit never came. Don't bother watching this one, it's just not good comedy.

The way Chris presents himself on podcasts is so dissimilar to how he acts during his stand up it's nauseating. If you took the video away and just played the audio from a random episode of his podcast then played No Pain, you would have a hard time believe they are the same person. Every bit fell flat, either because the material itself was juvenile or because he is constantly laughing at his own jokes. He can sometimes barely get out punch lines because he's already giggling, which is odd given the material isn't even laughable to the normal person. I wouldn't be surprised if you told me that the theater was empty and they were just playing a laugh track the entire time. He dragged the growling at a baby bit for almost ten minutes and the dolphin thing had to be 15 mins long, 15 mins of torture to my ears. I'll keep watching Congratulations but I've given up on checking out this dudes standup, hope his acting career pans out because this standup thing just isn't his game.

...be so funny on a podcast, yet so unfunny with stand-up? Apparently there's no correlation whatsoever. It's like he tries way too hard in front of an audience, and nothing feels genuine. I mean, I wish I liked his stand-up, but I just don't.