Pauly Shore's Natural Born Komics: Sketch Comedy Movie - Miami

Skit comedy has been a staple of television since the inception of the medium. In the fifties there were shows like Sid Caesar’s ‘Show of Shows’ or the Steve Allen Show that kept viewers laughing with little comedy bits. Now, with Saturday Night Live in its 33^rd year and more imitators than can be easily counted it was bound to happen, a skit comedy movie. Actually, a case can be made that this was done with Weird Al Yankovic’s ‘UHF’ back in 1989. That film had a plot even if it was gossamer thin. Now Pauly Shore has jumped into the fray, yes the art of cinema as to deal with the return of ‘The Weasel’. The title of the movie is longer than any possible script for it could ever be: ‘Pauly Shore's Natural Born Komics: Sketch Comedy Movie – Miami’. This is the kind of flick that people will either hate of love. It all depends on whether you are a fan of Shore. I have seen several of his movies; I have also had root canal, the experience for both were about the same. The flick did have a release on very late night Showtime cable hoping to get that pure gold demographic of insomniacs and people with no where to in the morning. Now First Look Entertainment is releasing the special DVD edition of it. Besides the film you get a lot of extras. If you just can’t get enough of Pauly Shore this is just the thing for you.

Besides Shore two others have writing credits for this flick; Ian Edwards and Tommy Tallarino. This is Edwards’ first script and he is bound to learn from the experience and more up to projects with more depth. Tazllarino has a couple of minor television episodes to his name. Somehow Shore managed to talk some notable people to appear here. Vivica A. Fox from the hit series ‘Ugly Betty’ and American Idol winner Ruben Studdard both make appearances. If you look at this film in the right light and after enough beers there are some funny moments in it. The premise is actually rather good. Each of the skits parodies some aspect of current pop culture. Everything from Punked, to Cheaters and numerous hidden camera shows are made fun of here. It is not as is making fun of these shows is difficult; most of the targets here have been spoofed many times before. This is actually part of a larger problem here; most of the material has been done by Shore in previous excursions. Even if the joke or skit is new Shore has the tendency to break the forth wall and tell the audience precisely what is about to occur. This is in line with his screen persona of a guy who never grew out of that awkward, trying too hard to liked teenager.

Shore does start out the flick by poking fun at his reputation. Flashing title cards on screen promise hip-hop, stand up and hotties but the catch is it stars Pauly Shore, showing a picture of him in really bad drag. At least he realizes that his brand of comedy is the groaner; he knows the audience will groan more than laugh at his jokes. Since this film was written, directed and produced by Shore a disclaimer was a good idea and probably solid from a legal stand point. The first segment is called by a name not for general audiences that describes a man who blocks the lusty interests of a friend. Let’s just say that in the introduction Shore makes some rooster sounds. He describes it as a hidden camera dating show where every guy is trying to get some. The segment consists of Shore trying to pick up some girls and just when he is making some progress his friend Kirk Fox comes along and ruins things for him. Now why the girls would be interested is perhaps the Discovery Channel should investigate for the sake of the species. His next target is a parody of the TV series Cheaters. Here a spouse uses the camera crew to catch the other member of the relationship in the act. In this take off Shore plays a black man, not even bothering to put on makeup. He depends only on his acting talent so it is pretty bad. His overweight wife is cheating on him with a little person. You might as well start the counter to keep track of politically incorrect humor; just make sure it can go to triple digits. Shore then tries to spice things up with some of his stand up comedy routine. In this segment the crowd does seem to respond well to his self deprecating humor. In later stand up bits when he stops making fun of himself and turns to other topics the audience becomes openly hostile towards him. Later he goes to the beach for ‘Chubby Girls Gone Wild’ where he attempts to get larger women to take off their tops. Needless to say it is not very successful. First of all no man is going to get anywhere telling a woman she is cubby. You might come to the conclusion at this point that Shore does not think through his bits; you would most likely be correct. He just parades silly ideas in front of the camera hoping someone will find it funny. Next is a parody called ‘Spunk’d, directed at the MTV hidden camera show ‘Punk’d’. Instead of targeting celebrities Shore goes after regular people trying to get through their day. In all of these parodies Shore does nail the look and feel of the original series. It is just the content he has trouble with. The much touted celebrity guest stars listed so prominently on the DVD come only have a few minutes on screen. I hope he paid them well.

In case you still need more of Pauly Shore the DVD comes with a couple of extras. The first one is called ‘The Diarrhea of Pauly Shore. I was afraid of what this might have been about considering the level of Shore’s humor. Thankfully it was only the making of featurette. It does detail how he conned people for the money to make this film. Then there is a deleted scenes and blooper reel. This is just in case you really want to see the scenes that were not fit to include in the film.

The DVD is released by First Look Entertainment for Showtime. Please, these are excellent companies responsible for some great entertainment; do not hold this release against them in any way. Since Showtime also releases ‘Dexter’ and this good intentioned serial killer lives in Miami perhaps he would consider it his public duty to take on Shore as a ‘client’. This is primarily for die heard fans of Shore, you know you arte out there.

Posted 03/22/08