Artie Lange: It's the Whiskey Talkin'

I've been a big fan of the Howard Stern show for a couple of years, and Artie has been one of my favorite people on the show, So I decided to check out some of his work, this being one of them.

So I went out and bought the DVD, and I have to say it was one of the funniest stand-ups I've seen, and I have seen a lot. I see it did get a lot of bad reviews, but that may be due to the fact that its straight forward, obscene at times, and he touches on some subjects such as racism without looking back, so this type of comedy obviously isn't for everyone. I say you should check it out for yourself before falling into other peoples reviews, and if you like it you like it, if you don't, yeah you get the point.

Artie Lange is the funniest guy to ever come from the great state of New Jersey. For all of you Jersey haters, this is not a small feat, as many people in show biz have originated from my home state (i.e. from Frank Sinatra, to Jason Biggs, to Lauryn Hill, to Zach Braff, and more) His comic wit has been honed over a 12 year career from Mad TV to stand up to the Howard Stern Show. This is a MUST see! There is no stand up comic like Artie, he's down to Earth with an amazing sense of humor. And the special features on the DVD are hilarious as well, with scenes of an on-location skit and parts of 2 nights of his stops in Jersey where the sun shines the brightest!

This DVD is: stupid, harsh, disgusting, foul, perverted, horrible, wrong, sick, nasty, gross, politically incorrect, sexist, homophobic, sophomoric, and absolutely hilarious. Sure, Artie comes across as a drunken moron who doesn't care about anything, and if you ask me, its refreshing. No holds barred gross out humor with little to no redeeming qualities, just what the world needs. Even liberals I've shown this to laughed hard at it, though they denied it afterwards. This is not something you watch with the family, this is really, really hardcore comedy. I've never played a standup DVD for a group of drunken friends and seen the reactions that I saw to this DVD, people were rolling on the ground laughing. Artie Lange is the patron saint for ignorant drunkards everywhere! A must see for fans of flat out offensive comedy.

I am an avid Howard Stern fan & think that Artie Lange has been a positive influence on the show. I was almost going to buy this DVD but was warned by several folks I know (fellow Stern fans) that it's a waste. One of them gave me his copy which he was about to throw out. After seeing half of this I chucked it into MY trash. IT'S THE WHISKEY Talking' looks & sounds like a bad cable access show from the late 1980s. The production values wouldn't cut it on a snuff film as Artie is often out of focus & filmed from what seems like a mile away, giving it the appearance of a security cam tape. Was this shot on someone's cell phone? Artie's material is even worse than the sub amateur production values. There isn't one second of his act that you haven't heard 1,000 times before from better comedians. Artie comes across like a 4th rate Belushi clone who stumbled onto stage at a suburban strip mall comedy club sometime around 1989. His lame & dated material wouldn't make it 5 minutes on amateur/open mike night at any comedy club in New York, LA or Boston which is probably why he had to go all the way to Tempe Arizona to find people to laugh at his tired diatribes. The sad thing is that the biggest audience responses come not from his material but his references to things from the Stern show. Whenever Artie senses that he's losing his audience--which is pretty much every 5 minutes--he'll do his Jeff The Drunk or Angus Young impression. These are seeded into his act more & more as even the entertainment starved audience in Tempe begins to tire of his stale "observations". The audience seems to be made up of rabid Stern fans who at first are psyched to see someone from the show in the flesh but who soon look as though they are sitting through the most embarrassing & long drunken wedding toast in history. I'll say this for the lousy production: at least it honestly shows the enthusiasm draining from the room like air escaping from a balloon. A more professional team would've intercut positive reaction shots of the crowd from the early part of the set when the audience was happy & hopeful that a fun night was about to begin. Instead the mounting disappointment & depression of the audience is faithfully captured.

And that's all in the first 30 minutes! Holy Jeezus I can't even imagine how awful the rest of the set was. A double bill of THE BAD LIEUTENANT & SCHNINDLER'S LIST would be lighter & funnier than the funeral that is IT'S THE WHISKEY Talking'. Even though I saw this on a friends discarded DVD I still feel like I was ripped off. I'll never get that half hour of my life back!