ppilf
This show is almost historical to me. I remember coming home from work one late summer day in 1999. I had dinner, went into the living room and sat down in front of the big-screen TV. The channel happened to be on HBO but I wasn't particularly interested in watching, I mainly wanted to nap. There was a guy on TV dressed kind of unusual doing a stand-up comedy routine. I had no idea who or what it was, but the guy did seem kind of cool. As a lark I turned up the sound and watched a little. At this point I completely forgot about my nap. I started laughing. He was hilarious. Then came a skit that made me laugh so hard that I found it hard to catch my breath. Then the humor came like rapid fire, one after the other, each more unbelievably hilarious than the previous. I was laughing so uncontrollably that I started to feel pain in my lungs and started to choke, I felt like I was going to hurl! Get this; I actually had to make the reluctant decision to turn off the TV because I was afraid I was going to suffocate! I couldn't breathe, my chest was throbbing in pain; and I'm in very good shape! I couldn't help thinking that this was the Monty Python death joke in real life! I'm actually hard to make laugh, but this guy is a phenomenon, a secret weapon, arguably the greatest comedian of all time (not to mention very intelligent and educated). After recovering I immediately looked up the next HBO airing of that show, and set up my VCR to record it. I'd never heard of Eddie Izzard prior to that day, but I immediately became a permanent and devoted fan!
Andy (film-critic)
Before last night, I must confess that I was an Eddie Izzard virgin. While I may have witnessed him in several film roles, it wasn't until this moment did I honestly know who this man was, how he thought, or that is true calling was in front of a large American audience making us chuckle at ourselves. Izzard is a transvestite, and is not ashamed to announce this to his audiences. Our first image of Izzard is in full make-up dressed as a female, little did I know that this was actually his "signature" appearance. Again, this is something that you do not know about the man while simply watching his films. If you want to experience Izzard for the first time, I think any of his one-man routines would be of help. Like a bottle of fresh wine, my wife and I chose Dress to Kill as our first sip of Izzard. I suppose it is as good as anywhere to begin. So, one fateful Saturday night, we popped his DVD into our player, sat ourselves down, and began the nearly two hour adventure into the mind of Eddie Izzard. Needless to say, I was both impressed and unimpressed all at once.Izzard's routine, like a small child dealing with ADD, was all over the place. We open Dress to Kill with an homage of sorts to the San Francisco trolley line coupled with Alcatraz. It is a random opening, which should have given us an indication of what Izzard's performance was about to transform into. With inconsistent voice-overs about the people riding the trolley to nearly annoying repetitive wording, we are swept into the auditorium finally to see Izzard in person. Dressed rather feminine, he dashes on stage and begins his bits about politics, Britain, and history. Izzard, is literally, all over the place with his comedy. Spewing bits of humor mixed with, what I would later learn as classic, mumbles, pauses, and what felt like a complete lack of focus. Don't get me wrong, there were some bits that just would make you laugh with delight. Some that I remember were the "cake or death", Hollywood British villains, the American way, and his classic "yes/no" routine. Sadly, these humorous elements nearly clashed with his random tangents, which went quickly into a fast rewind back to his memorized routine.It is obvious that Eddie Izzard is a smart man. From his routine, in which historical dates and events are obviously a excitable subject for him, you can see where his strengths and weaknesses are. His weakness, in my eyes, is the audience. It becomes abundantly clear midway through his bits that he will fall way off the subject if it is something the audience attaches itself to. In one aspect he would be discussing how the British loved to land on islands and place a flag there to call their own, the audience would laugh, he would go off on a tangent, and suddenly, ten minutes later, he would go back to that original thought. After a few times of doing this, I was annoyed. It is my belief that Izzard is a funny person by nature. He has the ability to make audiences laugh because of his eclectic style and excitement, sadly, what fails in this performance is his lack of formal comedy training. Now, I am no expert in the matter, but watching other famous comedians perform their routines, there seems to be a level of professionalism surrounding them. Watch Ray Romano, Rodney Dangerfield, or Jerry Seinfeld do their shows and you will witness a clean, crisp show which demonstrates to me that these performers actually rehearsed, rehearsed, and rehearsed again to get it right. Izzard, it was obvious, did not. Maybe he did, but in Dress to Kill it just felt like he read the newspaper one day, thought of some funny jokes, memorized a pattern, and nearly forgot it while on stage. He seemed sporadic and completely unprepared. I need to watch more Izzard, maybe this is his style, but for me, it seemed cheap and distorted.Coupled with Izzard's procrastination approach to comedy, the production value on this DVD felt like a late 80s release. I felt like I was watching an RPG game in which the camera angle goes everywhere except for the places that you instantly need it. Either the cameraman was drunk or the director just loved jumping from angle to angle. As viewers, we would find ourselves with a full shot of Izzard, then jump to a distance shot, to some random audience angle, and followed by some other random angle. We couldn't just stay in one place, but just like Izzard's routine, seemed to be all over the place with no consistency. Like most comedy DVDs, I wanted to see the audience laughing, I wanted to see more of Izzard's expressions (which, in my humble opinion, are his best traits), I wanted to see more of Izzard in general. The quality of this DVD does not enhance the quality of Izzard's show, sadly, it only seems to bring the overall production value down.Overall, if I were asked to watch another Eddie Izzard one-man stand-up routine, I would proudly say "yes". Perhaps this was one of his less valued tours (which is strange because it is this one that won him the most awards), but I want to give Izzard another chance. Eddie Izzard is hysterical when he works on his routine. His random interjections can be funny, but it is his well-developed jokes and commentary that really make his style of comedy stand out. I am eager to watch his "action" transvestite on screen and watch this "full-of-potential" comic develop in his career. Would I suggest this DVD to friends? I think that I would for the tasty cookies crumbled between ill-placed jokes, but I do not think I could watch Dress to Kill another time.Grade: *** out of *****
Joshua White
I never meant to become an addict, but somehow the compulsive need to quote Eddie Izzard developed gradually after seeing Dress to Kill for the first time a few years ago. There is a cult following of Mr. Izzard, and it is really distressing to see GenXers quoting his every joke to death. It's not only distressing--but it's annoying, too. The problem is, I'm as guilty as anybody else. He sucks you in. You watch it once and you laugh. You watch it again and you nod and laugh hysterically. The third, fourth, fifth time you watch it, you start saying his jokes along with him--and you STILL laugh. After a while, you start playing the CD or DVD out of habit, or when friends come over. Before you know it, you're busting a gut every time you see a squirrel eating a grapefr-- I mean a nut. But as much as I hate to criticize other Eddie Izzard fans, I think there is an actual problem when we call him an intellectual. I don't mean to be elitist, but Mr. Izzard is far from the intellegencia! A critic once commented that Izzard's strength is not his depth of knowledge, but rather his breadth. Just be careful when you comment on how intellectual his comedy is. You really risk sounding kind of--sorry, but--unlearned.
