Product Review

DVD Release Date: July 18, 2006 Customer Reviews: Don't watch this with a full bladder March 5, 2008 By Steven Sabin It was with extremely low expectations that I popped this DVD into the player after receiving it as a gift at Christmas. The cover just struck me as cheesy with those photoshopped, exaggerated heads. I guess I was expecting about 90 minutes of jokes about Lutheran church potlucks in MinnySOHduh with lots of noodle dishes and Jell-O ...delivered by folks who could elicit polite chuckles but little more. Boy was I wrong. With few exceptions, the comedians on this collection are hysterically funny. Don't think LOL or even ROFLOL. Think "grab the Depends." Maybe the real problem is that I've just become conditioned to believe that "clean" humor is synonymous with "corny" humor over the last 20 years. Hollywood is certainly working overtime to convey that message. Genuinely funny people like Robin Williams seem to have forgotten what made them funny in the first place, preferring to go the way of Andrew Dice Clay by being "edgy" (translation: off-the-charts vulgar), particularly when they do stand-up. It's cheapened them. Trash-talking your way to laughs is simple in today's culture. Taking the high road is a lot harder. Kind of like excelling in professional sports without taking steroids. I view the trash-talkers as the stand-up equivalents of steroid monkeys. They're taking a short-cut. The guys (and gals) that can do it the old-fashioned way are the ones who deserve the laughs. And to that point, the comedians on this DVD collection don't just deserve laughs, they get them. Side-splitting, eyes-watering, I-can't-breath laughs. When I later had some friends over, the reception was the same: everybody loved it - from my 12-year-old son, to my 70-year-old mom, to the "laughing isn't cool" skateboard-toting teens, to the 40-somethings like me. So take it from this former skeptic: you won't be disappointed.