JB Smoove: That's How I Dooz It

Like many, I know Smoove through Curb where he plays a very outlandish and energetic character; it was enjoying him in these snippets that made me check out his first filmed standup special. With a rather deliberately written and spoken title, Smoove opens the show with his own theme music, rewinding it (and himself) because of how much he loves it, and then acting out the various extreme things that the music makes him want to do. It is a high- energy start to the show but the overuse of the word 'dooz' and the hyper-expressive acting out did make me think he was just overplaying it a bit.

This feeling continues through the show because he is very physical and constantly dropping slang like dooz, calling people 'playboy', and swearing a lot. Such antics tend to replace content and there are jokes that go on too long due to his acting them out several times. That said, when he has invention and randomness in there, such delivery is very funny – particularly as he goes with the joke the whole way – whether it be a joke about police brutality leading to cooking tips, shadow puppet shows and ultimately a swan behind bars; this is one example but there are quite a few where his energy carries the audience to very silly and funny places, and these bits are very good. As I say, at times the material isn't there and it just feels he is acting up in a rather obvious manner just for the sake of keeping the energy in the room.

His act is pretty crude but where he has this invention and determination in the material, it does work well; it is just where he has little else but noise and energy that he gets a bit exposed and feels like he is falling back on swearing and such to carry him through. Worth a look if you like him though, because there is enough clever nonsense in here to carry you through the periods where there isn't.

To be honest I had my doubts in the first seconds of the show, wasn't sure if I was going to like this one. Then came his musical intro that was very energetic, and from then on you already get that feeling this guy can get the whole audience eating out of his hand once he's warmed-up. And warmed-up het gets, the more the show advances the better it gets. Credits to him for his endurance, he's very energetic, almost spastic, but certainly funny. He got me in tears a couple times and that's all I ask for when watching a stand-up comedy. That said I watched shows from other comedians with way better jokes but that I didn't enjoy as much as JB Smoove. JB Smoove's show is something different, he uses some objects (the chair is his favorite) to mimic us the jokes and that works very well. From chair, to microphone stand to his hands and microphone, it all contributes to make this show standing out. The content is sometimes very sexual, and that was also very funny. Maybe not for everyone but for others it will be hilarious. I will definitely look out for more shows of him, people need some energetic performers like JB Smoove, it's different than the usual stand-up comedies but it's for sure very entertaining.

I think Smoove's "Curb Your Enthusiasm" character - Leon - is terrific, so I made the mistake of thinking that, because he's a comic actor, he's also a comic. Nothing could be further from the truth. He touches on a lot of subjects, and completely fails to find anything funny in any of them. With enough props perhaps he could be a "prop comic" (the least-respected form), but even there he only shows up with a T-shirt, a chair, and a mike cord. I mean, he gets some mileage out of that mike cord, but prop comics have a little more obligation to be creative and bring something *zany*, no? Standup specials like this one really just make me ask one question: Where on earth do they find an audience full of people whose standards for comedy are so low that they can sustain an hour of laughter and applause in the face of Nothing. Funny. At. All. ?

Seriously. Is it free tickets? Free booze? Beats me. I didn't laugh.