Vito Calise Reviews: Kevin James Never Don’t Give Up
Columnist, radio producer, and film school graduate Vito Calise, is reviewing all the comedy specials he can see. You know him from SiriusXM’s Bennington Show, The Interrobang’s Big Brothers podcast, and as the star of the first ever Instagram young adult drama series, The Halls. Born and raised on New York City’s Upper West Side, Vito went to Chelsea’s School of Visual Arts, has danced on bars as a bartender around Manhattan, operated a mechanical bull and was even a doorman for a week. He loves comedy and he’s a straight shooter, sharing his thoughts on comedy specials with you. This week he’s taking on Kevin James: Never Don’t Give Up.
Netflix’s newest hour special is available now to stream on Netflix.com.
The funniest thing about the special is its name. Specifically that the name is “Never Don’t Give Up” which not only sounds exactly like the title of “Popstar: Never Stop Never Stopping” but it also even uses what may be the same font. Seriously, that is what I found to be the only funny thing about the special that they didn’t even take the time out to see if that had been done.
My biggest problem with the comedy is how safe it all is. It’s an hour of sitcom comedy, it actually feels like he is doing bits that were turned down for use on Kevin Can Wait. Even his facial expressions that he uses as punchlines feel like faces we’ve seen on King of Queens multiple times. There is a bit about getting a cigar from someone that feels like it could be on the show next year. Even when he’s not doing the plot for sitcoms, he does what he’s probably seen the warmup comic for Kevin Can Wait do, ask people if they have tattoos and have them show it off to the crowd. If you’ve been to a TV taping in the past few years, late night or sitcom, you’ve probably seen this done before. Like I said before, very safe and very easy.
My frustration with the special reached peak levels when he went into a bit about Benihana. He joked about the amount of food you get, the seating situation and onion volcanoes. It’s the kind of material that kills when you’re waiting at the bar for your table to be ready at Benihana but nowhere else. Another food-related bit was about food allergies, specifically being lactose intolerant. The joke is all about how common food allergies are made up and we didn’t have those 30 years ago. Of all the food allergies he could have gone with he focused on this, which is amazing because it’s probably the only one we’ve been hearing about for 30 years. How many movies or TV shows have you watched where someone eats something, finds out it has dairy in it and makes a funny face and runs to the bathroom. Then he goes into jokes about gluten, which we’ve now been hearing comics complain about for probably 10 years.
The jokes really have no flow or any real connection to each other. If you don’t pay attention to it for a minute and drift off, when you come back you will have no idea where you are. Yes, the bigger issue is that you were not staying entertained but it’s just bizarre how there is no flow at all. It’s almost like he’s rushing to get all this material out there.
Making this special is a smart move by Netflix though. Kevin James was probably doing an hour at the Beacon and they thought “Hey, we can record this and make it a special” because there is truly nothing special about it. It’s a win-win for the streaming company because people do love Kevin James. Kevin Can Wait gets strong ratings and King of Queens is on TBS every morning. If you like Kevin James you’re going to watch this and enjoy it. It’s not for standup comedy fans, it’s for Kevin James fans. Netflix could produce a special starring the kid from Young Sheldon doing science material and fans of the show would probably eat it up. If you like Kevin James shows, watch this. If you’re just looking for some standup to watch just skip it and enjoy whatever is out next week.
