Bo Burnham: Make Happy (2016)

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catherinefrances
yes! 7 years 10 months ago
geebutts
This is actually incredible. 7 years 9 months ago
Siskoid
Bo Burnham's 2016 show Make Happy has an incredible opener and an phenomenal closer, and in the middle, a lot of great bits (tapering off at the start of the third act and picking up again), showcasing his unique blend of honesty (especially as pertains to the fact that performances are staged lies), music (and the systematic takedown of several genres), and the kind of happy/sad humor I really go for. Burnham is well known for his staging, turning stand-up sets into rock opera and well-produced one-man sketches, and I wish the team FILMING the show were as good as their jobs. He's so precise, it seems a shame that the camera and editing can lose focus. But he's not just a master self-director, a good song parodist, and well-timed stand-up, he's also a nimble deconstructor of his own performance, and with an appreciated not-entirely-false disdain for his audience, of their predictable reactions to his material (and to ANY material, really). He turns the cameras on the public a few times to make his points, and they sting, and yet, people laugh, as they should. That's real comedy, it's a toxic relationship, never more than when the comedian is this clever. 3 years 4 months ago