The Funniest American Stand-Up Comedy


   

The laughDB database is dedicated to the funniest comedy movies, stand-up comedy and TV series.

This section is for stand-up comedy sets from the USA. By default they are presented starting with the ones ranking highest on the laugh-o-meter, but you can also sort them by year, title or IMDB rating.


Funniest American Comedies sorted by Laugh-o-meter (descending) / page 9 of 10


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Whoopi Goldberg: Fontaine... Why Am I Straight posterWhoopi Goldberg: Fontaine... Why Am I Straight?
      1988 | USA | Laughs: 1.4 (Broken Comedies) | imdb: 7.4
      

First off, a few words to explain the title of this set: Whoopi Goldberg plays the character of her alter-ego Fontaine, a male junkie who, after going off drugs, is flabbergasted by what he sees when looking at America through sober eyes — hence Why Am I Straight? That's the premise of the show.

I was blown away by Whoopi's comic mastery — body language, faces, voices… she had a lot of ingredients. Sadly, what this show doesn't have today is relevance. Most of the material was circumstantial, relating as it did to events few will remember or to people who no longer matter. I smiled at the Reagan impressions, but for me the show had nothing to trigger laughter, and for younger people it will be worse.

A beautiful document for the archives of comedy… but a poor choice if you're just after something to make you laugh today.

(Last viewed: December 2019)

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Ali Wong: Hard Knock Wife posterAli Wong: Hard Knock Wife
      2018 | USA | Laughs: 1.1 (Just Awful) | imdb: 7.4
      

I started watching this show the night after finishing Ali's first set, Baby Cobra, and found the contrast disturbing. First, it looked like Ali had seen an acting coach between the two sets, as there was a lot of effort to make her face more expressive. I love a good clown, but to me the acting felt forced. Second, it felt as though Ali had closely studied (and copied) Jim Gaffigan's technique of alternating between voices — in her case between the voice of a calm factual narrator and that of an outraged commentator. I have nothing against that technique, it just took me by surprise after watching the previous show.

My first sitting only lasted fifteen minutes, during which I didn't laugh. To be fair, for much of that time the topic was lactation, not one to which I particularly relate, but which is fair game given the amount of crude material regarding male physiological functions which women have to endure when they watch male stand-up comedians in the company of their male friends.

The second quarter was an exercise in gross-out, with more disturbing flickers of traits borrowed from other stage humorists, such as Eddie Murphy. No laughs.

During the third fifteen-minute sitting, Ali attempts to create humor by drawing from her family life, which is fine in theory. But apparently Ali still hasn't learned that for a situation to be funny, the audience must be able to relate to it. Bill Cosby speaking about family interactions with his wife and kids in an everyman way? Yes, relatable. Ali Wong speaking of her husband mooching off her millionaire income? Not relatable.

In summary, the amount of borrowing in that set made me feel like I'd been fed a product, a product designed by "clever" business people who had done their homework studying competing products. Funny how you can copy the general lines of a product but completely miss its essence.

Sometimes a knock-off is still functional. In this case, seeing that the "product's" function is to trigger laughter, I don't feel it's too harsh to state that the result is complete garbage.

At that stage, of course, the final quarter wasn't a soft landing, but the crash that one had come to expect. Thankfully, I had Ricky Gervais' last set lying around to cheer me up.

Sadly for Ali Wong, comedy is not ninety percent attitude, even though it might look like it. It's ninety percent brains. You can buy a loud dress, but you can't buy a certain kind of neuronal wiring — at least not yet.

(Last viewed: November 2019)

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Aziz Ansari: Right Now posterAziz Ansari: Right Now
      2019 | USA | Laughs: 1.0 | imdb: 7.5
      wikipedia

In this excruciatingly slow set, Ansari appears to try to connect with the public about something he's done for which he'd like to make amends. Only watch if you're absolutely certain that nothing can worsen your present state of boredom.

(Last viewed: October 2019)

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Dave Chappelle: The Closer posterDave Chappelle: The Closer
      2021 | USA | Laughs: 1.0 | imdb: 8.1
      wikipedia

At the beginning of the show, Dave says it is the last set he will do in a long time. Given the quality of this last entry, I'm not sad about that.

To start with, the show is so full of pregnant pauses that I had to watch it at 130% velocity just to stay awake. Second, the first part of the show is filthy — there's just no need to be that vulgar. Last, it turns out that the main point of the set is for Dave to justify himself to some people he's offended. I can understand the desire to explain oneself, but there are other venues for that — saying what a good guy you actually are is just not good comedy.

My advice: skip this one and watch Killing Them Softly (Dave's set from the year 2000) instead. That's what I plan to do tomorrow in order to erase this insipid blob.

(Last viewed: October 2021)

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Doug Stanhope: Go HomeDoug Stanhope: Go Home
      2007 | USA | Laughs: 1.0 (Just Awful) | imdb: 8.2
      

A mix of stand-up comedy and interviews set in Edinburgh and focusing on immigration. Doug, who is usually clear-thinking, is surprizingly narrow-minded on this issue, essentially telling people who cannot compete with the low wages of recent immigrants that they're idiots if they can't make themselves competitive by improving their skills. That's the standard elitist attitude of someone of above-average skills, someone who indeed is able to cut a slice for himself. Wake up, Doug, not everyone has your abilities—and no one chooses to be an idiot, just like no one chooses to be deaf. If someone truly is an idiot, does that mean the rest of the world has the right to step over him, does that mean you can laugh at his plight, that his country should treat him like garbage? A fine philosophy if you want to create a super-race. Oh, wait, that's been tried before. It's good that Doug can empathize with immigrants, but he has an empathy blind spot when it comes to the local underclass. Doug has it right on nationalism, of course, but there's a screaming lack of subtlety in his stance of blaming the victim. (Last viewed: January 2013)

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George Carlin: Life Is Worth Losing DVDGeorge Carlin: Life Is Worth Losing
      2005 | USA | Laughs: 1.0 | imdb: 8.3
      wikipedia

This is a special show in that its format stands out from George's usual. I want to say that it's more a long poem than a stand-up comedy set, but that would be confusing. At heart, it's a great long rant about America, but in this globalized world most of the things Carlin says could apply to most places. Some of the themes include suicide, murder, torture, consumption, education, parents and disaster. I had planned to watch the 74 minutes in two sittings but stayed hypnotized by George Carlin's amazing skill, the extent of which I had forgotten. No laughs, but an unmissable set for Carlin fans and anyone with a taste for social commentary. (Last viewed: September 2018)

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Joe Rogan: Talking Monkeys in Space posterJoe Rogan: Talking Monkeys in Space
      2009 | USA | Laughs: 1.0 (Broken Comedies) | imdb: 7.8
      

This was the third of Joe's shows that I watched, one a night, and it was a strange experience. On the one hand, I preferred Joe's delivery (less screaming) and found him both smart and likeable. On the other hand, the set made me smile a lot less than the 2016 show Triggered and the 2018 show Strange Times, and that despite the fact that Joe worked really hard at it.

Themes included pot, babies, religion and more.

The second part of the show was Joe answering questions from the public, apparently about a TV show he hosts. Not knowing anything about it, I thought I wouldn't relate (a precondition for comedy) and I didn't watch it.

(Last viewed: December 2019)

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Reggie Watts: Why S??? So Crazy posterReggie Watts: Why S!?! So Crazy
      2010 | USA | Laughs: 1.0 | imdb: 7.2
      

Reggie was highly recommended to me by a friend who often has similar tastes. Reggie's specialty is to sing humorous lyrics, with a range of funny voices, over a background of loops that he lays by skillful beat boxing. There is no doubt that Reggie is extremely talented, but unlike my friend I wasn't blown away by those performances. For one, I couldn't agree with him that they were unique—having seen a number of acts using looping over the years. Bill Bailey, whom my friend didn't know, certainly comes to mind. For me, in a sense, Bill is the original Reggie Watts, although Bill's sets (such as the wonderful Part Troll) have lots in them besides "funny music". And that's another thing that dampened my enthusiasm about the extremely talented, immensely likeable Reggie Watts: for me, too much of the show was "the same". Sad to say, but I kept falling asleep, and it wasn't sleep deprivation as I was later able to sit through a moderately funny episode of the Australian comedy series Rake. During Reggie's video I smiled a lot, I was impressed, but I dozed off too many times and just didn't laugh.

So while I respect Reggie's talent and find him immensely likeable, I won't be seeking out more of his work. On the other hand, your tastes might be more aligned with my friend's, so I encourage you to check him out. (Last viewed: June 2017)

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Wanda Sykes: Not Normal posterWanda Sykes: Not Normal
      2019 | USA | Laughs: 1.0 | imdb: 7.2
      

If you're the kind of person who laughs uncontrollably if Wanda Sykes so much as bats an eyelash, then this tape is for you. From what I could tell from the fifteen minutes I tried to watch before canning it, it's an insipid mixture of easy jokes and mentions of people who, with a few exceptions, will be forgotten tomorrow. One exception is the president in office at the time of the taping. But it's not enough to say "Trump" to have a stand-up comedy set, Wanda!

I enjoyed some of this artist's earlier work but find her recent production extremely weak — except when she's acting, as in Bad Moms.

(Last viewed: October 2019)

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Gallagher: The Maddest posterGallagher: The Maddest
      1983 | USA | Laughs: 0.8 | imdb: 7.9
      

It was fun to see a slice of the 1980s for a moment, but it wasn't funny. We've moved on, and so has comedy. We've been exposed to so much great and appalling comedy since the time this set was tape that there is nothing left to salvage. Or perhaps there is and I didn't see it — I couldn't get past the twentieth minute. (Last viewed: November 2018)

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Dave Attell: Captain Miserable DVDDave Attell: Captain Miserable
      2007 | USA | Laughs: 0.6 (Just Awful) | imdb: 7.0
      

This is a disgusting little man spewing racist and other ignorant or offensive material for the sake of being non-politically correct. There was a crowd of people laughing. Who are these people? Oh, right, that was Washington D.C., the seat of the US government. I held on as long as I could for a change of tack but had to give up after sixteen minutes. This is the kind of show that makes you appreciate even more the craft and genius of true stand-up comics such as Bill Bailey or Eddie Izzard. (Last viewed: September 2013)

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Dave Chappelle: The Bird Revelation posterDave Chappelle: The Bird Revelation
      2017 | USA | Laughs: 0.5 (Don't Bother) | imdb: 7.7
      

Even though I wasn't in too demanding a mood when I sat down (I generally like Dave), I found this to be the dullest piece of stand-up I'd watched in a long while. The delivery was painfully slow, and the jokes (on the theme of Hollywood's harassment scandals) just weren't funny.

For me, the feeling of the first part of the show was "Dave Chappelle trying for the first time to improvise material for an upcoming show". Toward the end, Dave acts like he wants to share a personal story—the reason for him disappearing from show business for twelve years. Maybe this was meant to be therapeutic for Dave, but for my part I prefer to know in advance when my role as spectator is to provide a sympathetic ear: I had come here for comedy, not to give you empathy. (Last viewed: August 2018)

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Ron White: You Can't Fix Stupid posterRon White: You Can't Fix Stupid
      2006 | USA | Laughs: 0.5 (Just Awful) | imdb: 7.4
      wikipedia

After watching They Call Me Tater Salad, we thought we'd try another of Ron's shows. It wasn't as bad as fingernails on a chalkboard, but it was awful anyhow, and we did have to give up one third into the set. Ron had the demeanor of someone who has had to interrupt his vacation to get to the stage, and who has no shame about how unprepared he is. Much of the routine was dedicated to bodily functions. Ron seemed proud of coming up with the premise that gives the show its title—that the one thing you can't fix about yourself is if you aren't bright. Interesting point, Ron. Now would you please go watch a show by Bill Bailey then let us know again where on that stupid-to-smart spectrum you believe you stand? (Last viewed: September 2013)

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Steven Wright: When the Leaves Blow Away DVDSteven Wright: When the Leaves Blow Away
      2006 | USA | Laughs: 0.5 (Don't Bother) | imdb: 7.6
      wikipedia

Without a single facial expression, Steven Wright speaks in a barely audible drone. So do I, mind you, but I'm not on stage trying to make people laugh. To me, this show feels more like a poetry reading than stand-up comedy, as Steven strings one long sentence after another. I was house-sitting when I watched this show. The dog had been barking to protest being tethered to the patio, but Steven put him to sleep. I had to stop after ten minutes. The audience seemed to laugh, so maybe the material is just too smart for me and the dog. (Last viewed: August 2010)

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Dave Chappelle: Equanimity posterDave Chappelle: Equanimity
      2017 | USA | Laughs: 0.5 (Don't Bother) | imdb: 8.1
      

The worst thing about this show isn't that it's not funny. (Spoiler: it's not funny.) It's that the intonations are all wrong. To my ears, it sounded like the delivery was scripted to the millimeter. Of course we don't expect stand-up comedy to be all improvised, but it shouldn't sound all fake. And that is what it sounded like: fake—with pauses and chuckles in pre-determined places, with emphasis given to certain syllables. I'm not sure whether it was in a Ted talk or a political speech, but I had recently heard a presentation with the emphasis falling in the exact same awkward places. Dave and that guy must have the same trainer. You would think that at this point in his career Dave could handle public speaking more competently. The show was one big disappointment. (Last viewed: August 2018)

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(This section: Funniest American Comedies)


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