Synopsis
Patton riffs on the hazards of aging, his failed shutdown plans, and the day his wife turned into a Valkyrie in this stand-up special he also directed.
Patton Oswalt: We All Scream
2022 Directed by Patton Oswalt
Cast
Genre
Popular reviews
More-
A few months before Oswalt taped this special, I took a seat at the Largo - comedy theater of legends! - and watched him work out some of the new material. The lengthy anecdotes about being a mess during the covid-19 lockdown (which he adorably keeps calling "the shutdown") killed. I felt the air get sucked out of the room, in a good way, when Oswalt described the explosive bowel movement inflicted upon him by hemorrhoid surgery.
That joke makes it in here, but the Denver audience doesn't react like it should. It's now the closer to a mediocre hour of comedy, very good on his life now and pretty dreadful when Oswalt re-inflates the balloon of 90s sex jokes.…
-
-
I’d like to talk about Patton Oswalt by way of my love for the rock band Weezer.
I’ve seen Weezer eight times - four in the past year or so, and have another ticket to see them in February 2023. I’m pretty obsessed.
People who used to love Weezer hate this, to put it lightly. They take my continued love for this particular band as a personal affront to their own core values, even though they themselves are an entirely separate, unrelated entity. I’ve made so many people (ahem men in their 30s) go from totally fine to watching their blood boil with the smallest positive remark about anything they’ve done post-1996. It’s a bit amusing, but it mostly baffles me.
Then…
-
-
"Clown pubes" was funny for zero of the fifteen (?) minutes he spent filling time with it.
-
It doesn’t seem like he has a lot of killer material in this special, but the hour flows at a brisk pace. I think it’s his upbeat attitude that really helps make the bits better.
His Covid stuff was actually pretty decent about his lack of progress of knocking things off his to do list during lockdown. It was rather impressive how well he worked off the cuff while targeting about 4 couples in the front row of the show. His best bit was how the older generation gets to pick the next president out of spite against the younger generations. Some good stuff about Jeneane Garofalo.
Worst bit was about clown pubes that went on for entirety too long.…
-
love patton, rooting for him to knock one out of the park again. unfortunately this has the cadence of a "fun" professor riffing on course material at 8 am to a lecture hall of half-asleep students. not very good. it happens! i think it's fine when a comedian reaches success and a certain age and loses their edge as a result. it's like watching a retired wrestler come back for one more match. yeah the work isn't really tight anymore but you're happy for the guy who entertained you for so long. you probably don't watch to watch a guy in his 50s attempting the moonsaults that made them famous anyway (in this metaphor the moonsaults are "jokes about doing writer's room punch-up on raw 9/11 footage")
-
If I was one of the people in charge at Pixar, I took notes.
Needed to recharge a bit and I wasn't in the mood for a movie. I've always enjoyed Patton Oswalt whenever he pops up in movies and I've never seen his stand-up before. His set here is nothing to write home about, but it was solid enough that I'd be willing to watch his other specials. Patton seems like the type of guy you'd love to just hang out and watch movies with.
-
It's official: Stavros Halkias is the only working comic allowed to do crowd work. It's true!
-
Patton seems drunk in this or something. His worst special yet.
He starts off strong, but then gets into clown pubes and riffing on names of Sirius radio stations. By the time he was fumbling through talking to the front row, the sad realization that one of my favorite comedians is stretching like 15 minutes of good material into an hour started to sink in. His bit about confronting a trespasser during the lockdown is like an unfunny story your coworker repeats 15 times to every new person. Oh I hate it, it's so sad to see him at this place in his career.
-
-
I’m beginning to wonder if I like Patton Oswalt more in theory than I do an execution. Whether it’s my love of him from playing Remy in Ratatouille, or his obsessive and amazing knowledge of nerd culture, he should really be right up my alley. But he often tends to go off script a little too much, while also staying on jokes that aren’t working a little too long, to the detriment of his own act. This new special is no different.
The first two-thirds of this special is almost entirely skippable. There’s a prolonged joke about clown pubes in a barn that goes on for over over 15 minutes, and it’s not great. You can tell the audience didn’t…