Originally published at: Hilarious secret demo for an abandoned Ben Stiller comedy | Boing Boing
…
Interesting concept.
A good impressionist does not announce who they are impersonating, so the signals are all there about how mediocre an impressionist Billy Glimmer would actually have been had the project come to fruition.
4 Likes
What buildings in Las Vegas can he impersonate?
5 Likes
Eh.
Ben Stiller’s comedy is not as funny as he thinks.
9 Likes
I find him incredibly unfunny, glad it’s not just me.
8 Likes
Yeah, it definitely looked spot on with that other promo video you found. That guy wasn’t much better than Stiller’s impression of him doing impressions.
4 Likes
So, the Zoolander of impressionists?
4 Likes
I have also had that blah feeling for most things I have actually seen Stiller performing in, but I like a lot of either his ideas…or maybe it’s just his ability to pick good people for projects and his work behind the camera. Heat Vision and Jack is hilarious, and there are lot’s of great writing and ideas in The Ben Stiller Show. What has really made me re-evaluate him though is Severance. His direction on that series is so good!
So while I may not think he’s an especially funny performer, I think that Anne and Jerry can be very proud of their boy
This video is a perfect example…I find his performance almost unwatchable but when the text came up for “11 Dead Comedians Brought Back To Life!” I cracked up.
5 Likes
That real Vegas preformer was terrible and deserving of parody, but there isn’t a lot of comedy to be mined from “hey this guy you’ve never heard of really sucked”
Seems more fitting of a meh SNL skit than a whole movie.
4 Likes
Agreed. Severance was excellent.
The tipping point for me was The Secret Life of Walter Mitty. It was the first time I wasn’t just annoyed by his presence the whole time. Fantastic movie (something I’ve never said a Ben Stiller movie before).
5 Likes
“It was 150 dollars and it was worth very dollar” lol
I’ve always liked Mr Stiller’s stuff (haven’t seen his museum family movie shit though). He’s not quite our Stephen Chow but is reliably funny unlike other inexplicably popular “comedians” (cough Sandler cough Ferrell cough Carrey).
Who was the comic who did an impression of anyone the audience named by going “ok here’s my impression of (audience pick) with knitting needles jammed into his eyes ARRRHHHH!!! ARGHHHHH!!!”?
3 Likes
That was Mister Mike (Michael O’Donoghue)
Who I love for once saying "“Making people laugh is the lowest form of comedy.”
3 Likes
Low hanging fruit for sure, but the fact that he did this just to post the videos there unnoticed is amazing. When I say Stiller is not quite our Stephen Chow I should say he’s the closest we’ve got to a comedy writer/ director/ star of that caliber.
3 Likes
When sat down, I’m pretty much indistinguishable from Luxor.
2 Likes
Sounds like Mike O’Donoghue should do a double bill with Stuart Lee.
2 Likes
Funny how unfunny funny is, only if unfunny enough, funny. For close to 40 years I relied on the Jerry Lewis Labor Day Telethon as my sole source of just this kinda old school Vegas-tinged “entertainment”. Nowadays I’ll have to be content with a Ben Stiller clip, so thanks. In spite of the fact that I have proclaimed for years that “comedy is not funny”, I appreciate Ben Stiller. He sure seems to give rise to a lot of vocal detractors. Why does he draw people’s ire so?
2 Likes
He can take a pratfall pretty well but he gurns for the camera way too much.
My wife likes Meet the Parents but mostly for the airline jokes, cat using a toilet and her crush on Owen Wilson.
1 Like
When I saw the word “hilarious” in a blog post title, I immediately assumed that the poster was being ironic. In this case, I think the poster tipped his hand by juxtaposing “abandoned” with “comedy”. After all, in most cases, when something aspiring to comedy is abandoned, it usually means it wasn’t very funny at all, right? I don’t think that “Ben Stiller” and “comedy” are necessarily oxymoronic, so that pairing didn’t give the poster’s intended irony away. It was the word “hilarious” which put me on the alert for irony, and when I also saw “abandoned” I knew I was going to see something decidedly unfunny when I clicked the link. And that’s exactly what happened! I feel really good about how I detected the irony and saved myself from being disappointed.
1 Like
I’d be hard pressed to see this turned into a successful comedy. The first time I saw a smarmy character was enough; after that every character like this starts out immediately unlikable and annoying and goes downhill rapidly. If you have to bring one into a film, they’re best suited to a cameo role: introduce the character long enough to see the horrible person, then quickly have the sidekick accidentally punch them in the nose and let them collapse off camera.
There have been exceptions, of course. While Bill Murray’s smarmy schtick was usually painful, he parleyed it into a masterpiece in Groundhog Day, one of the best movies ever. And Will Ferrell usually annoys me, but again it played well in the Lego Movie, especially with the reveal that he was based on the kid’s father.
But those successes are few and far between.
1 Like
