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Wanda Sykes: Not Normal
Netflix has treated us to another lukewarm version of what was a very funny stand up. I think I'm going to call it the Netflix Curse. In the past few months, I have seen several comedy concerts starring people who used to have me rolling on the floor in laughter, but something comes over them when Netflix gets hold of them and they are only a shell of the comic they used to be. The curse continues with a 2019 concert called Wanda Sykes: Not Normal.
Let me start off by saying that Wanda Sykes is a funny woman. She stole every scene she had in movies like Monster-in-Law and Evan Almighty, as well as every scene she gets with her recurring role on ABC's Black-ish, but the Netflix Curse seems to be a mighty force that has crippled people like Kevin Hart and Chris Rock, and they seemed to have done the same thing with poor Wanda.
This concert filmed in New York, gets off to a slow start with what should have been sure-fire material. Just like every other stand-upon the planet right now, Sykes starts off by ripping into Donald Trump and even though the audience seems to be in hysterics, this material did nothing for me. Maybe it has something to do with the fact that I've been watching the cast of SNL rip into Trump on a weekly basis for the last two years, so a lot of what Sykes does here just has the air of recycled material we've all heard other places ever since Trump was sworn in...she just doesn't bring anything fresh to the Trump-bashing party. There's one point where she complains that Trump doesn't know what to do with his hands and when she demonstrated what he does, I didn't get it.
Once she gets off Trump, the show does start getting funny. Her takes on reality TV shows like The Bachelor and Naked and Afraid were very funny, but her segue into the expected tirade on racism, which I'm beginning to think is required by law of all black comics, gets a little preachy when she starts talking about the large confederate flag that still hangs near the entrance to her hometown in Virginia. Racism is bad, we get it.
She does scores when she starts talking about her French wife and her two white stepchildren. The bit about getting a phone call from her wife about the kids having head lice was very amusing and I also loved the voice she uses for her wife, I don't know why, but the voice she employs for her wife really cracked me up. Wanda Sykes is a very funny woman, but judging from this concert, it's kind of hard to tell.
Netflix has treated us to another lukewarm version of what was a very funny stand up. I think I'm going to call it the Netflix Curse. In the past few months, I have seen several comedy concerts starring people who used to have me rolling on the floor in laughter, but something comes over them when Netflix gets hold of them and they are only a shell of the comic they used to be. The curse continues with a 2019 concert called Wanda Sykes: Not Normal.
Let me start off by saying that Wanda Sykes is a funny woman. She stole every scene she had in movies like Monster-in-Law and Evan Almighty, as well as every scene she gets with her recurring role on ABC's Black-ish, but the Netflix Curse seems to be a mighty force that has crippled people like Kevin Hart and Chris Rock, and they seemed to have done the same thing with poor Wanda.
This concert filmed in New York, gets off to a slow start with what should have been sure-fire material. Just like every other stand-upon the planet right now, Sykes starts off by ripping into Donald Trump and even though the audience seems to be in hysterics, this material did nothing for me. Maybe it has something to do with the fact that I've been watching the cast of SNL rip into Trump on a weekly basis for the last two years, so a lot of what Sykes does here just has the air of recycled material we've all heard other places ever since Trump was sworn in...she just doesn't bring anything fresh to the Trump-bashing party. There's one point where she complains that Trump doesn't know what to do with his hands and when she demonstrated what he does, I didn't get it.
Once she gets off Trump, the show does start getting funny. Her takes on reality TV shows like The Bachelor and Naked and Afraid were very funny, but her segue into the expected tirade on racism, which I'm beginning to think is required by law of all black comics, gets a little preachy when she starts talking about the large confederate flag that still hangs near the entrance to her hometown in Virginia. Racism is bad, we get it.
She does scores when she starts talking about her French wife and her two white stepchildren. The bit about getting a phone call from her wife about the kids having head lice was very amusing and I also loved the voice she uses for her wife, I don't know why, but the voice she employs for her wife really cracked me up. Wanda Sykes is a very funny woman, but judging from this concert, it's kind of hard to tell.