Matt Rife: Lucid - A Crowd Work Special

I will admit I only lasted about 15 minutes. The first bit with the mother-daughter seemed totally staged. It had to have been staged and that just seems like cheating and a gimmick. I really like him in his short videos and he does sell out. Tried to get tickets to see him while he was in Maine. They even had to add a couple of shows because they sold out so quickly. But maybe he sticks to his own material and doesn't do crowd work. There's no way you can convince me that that mother and daughter were not planted there. This just absolutely no way it's believable so for that reason I turned it off and came here to leave a review.

I went into this today ready to laugh as I usually do when watching his crowd work on the internet short videos. Of course, sometimes he makes me uncomfortable and sometimes really uncomfortable. Still, I wanted to watch and laugh. And I did a few times. And I was really uncomfortable a few times. But mainly, I was ready for it to be over because I found it very limiting. The idea of dreams as the focal point of his entire show just stifled anything that went beyond that box he put his show in. It went beyond a few times, yes. But I really think I would have enjoyed a pure stand up routine instead of all crowd work. He's funny and personable, but this time it just didn't completely work for me.

Crowd work is improv. Improv is scary and hard. Matt is brilliant at it...seriously, and looks so comfortable in front of a crowd, who is always judging you, and he is able to completely hold court. You have to be whip smart and have a varied diet of history, current events, politics, general gossip, etc, and Matt has all that at a young age.

I just don't get that some people hate him...he's so personable and funny. I know he's be accused of punching down at women in his routines but there is none of that here. It's super fun to watch him play off the crowd and seems to even be overly respectable to everyone involved.

Matt his crowd work is usually good but you can't build a full show around it. You just don't get enough entertaining scenario's. So, how to fix it? Stage a couple people. The first mom-daughter part felt fully staged. I don't buy it for one second.

Other interactions were quite basic. Not very entertaining. Some of the "regular" comedy he does in between is more of the same of his last specials his stand up just isn't very good, his crowd work usually is. The clips online are short clips out of full shows and only the actually funny ones get uploaded but this shows that you can't force that in a show.

Was listening to it on a walk but if I wasn't I would have turned it off after 15 minutes.

We've been fans of Matt for like 5 or 6 years now. He has done amazing Crowd work over the years. But the special fell flat. It was horrible crowd work I thought. I think the problem was he trying to have a theme, dreams, and it just did not work. It was not spontaneous ...it just didn't work. Crowd work has to be spontaneous. (jennifer kirson) Over the years he's done amazing crowd work. But to do a show about crowd work. With little edits, then you're put on the spot. Maybe editing would of it made a better? I don't know. But I do know we love Matt rife, we always will, he's very talented, this special just fell short I felt.