In mid-September 2005, fresh from his success in "Wedding Crashers," Vince Vaughn took four hand-picked comedians and a few actors on a performing tour from Hollywood to the heartland, performing 30 consecutive nights in 30 cities in the Southwest, South, and Mid-West. This documentary is more than a chronicle of that show and of the comedians in it. With back-stage and on-bus interviews interspersed with routines from the show, a picture gradually emerges of the lives and influences on these four comedians that informs their routines. And as with any good road movie, unexpected things happen, like Katrina, and the performers meet some extraordinary people in unlikely places.
The landmarks along the way are performers' icons, like The Crystal Palace and Buck Owens in Bakersfield and the Ryman Auditorium in Nashville. Or something more sobering, like the jail in Las Vegas where the Egyptian-born Ahmed Ahmed was held for 12 hours after being arrested at the airport, apparently for looking Arab. That experience has been incorporated into his routine, and from that and other stories, we see what made these performers who they are, and why each has something different to say to us about our culture, our American-ness, ourselves.
The big payoff comes in interviews with parents of the comedians near the end of the movie, when suddenly things seem to snap into focus. In talking about themselves and their offspring, seeing these comics we have come to know a little now through their parents' eyes, we see both their diversity and common themes of love, independence, and ambition that have brought these performers to this point.
Reportedly Vince Vaughn changed the movie's distributor because the original pick planned to promote the yuck-fest angle. And he was right. For while the movie is funny, really laugh-out-loud funny much of the time, there is something more it has to say than just chronicling four stand-up routines. Clearly Vaughn had this in mind when he chose Oscar-winner Ari Sandel (live action short "West Bank Story" 2005) to direct. The result is a funny/sad snapshot of our pop middle-class culture and the life these men have chosen.
Rated R. 100 minutes. Directed by AriSandel. Produced by Vince Vaughn. Distributed by Picturehouse Entertainment. With: Ahmed Ahmed, Peter Billingsley, John Caparulo, Bret Ernst, Justin Long, Sebastian Maniscalco, Vince Vaughn.
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