Dane Cook: Vicious Circle (2006)

Self-important, over-dramatic, uninspired.

A lot of fun.

The film creates a perfect balance between action and depth of basic needs, in the midst of an infertile atmosphere.

The movie runs out of plot and jokes well before the end of a two-hour running time, long for a light comedy.

Though I thought that many of the laughs were undeserved and perhaps at some points forced, I thought that the actual performance was not all that bad. Firstly, talking for 2 hours and 12 minutes is an impressive feat in itself, but to a large crowd and maintaining that kind of energy throughout the performance is really good. Also, his material is not that bad at all. Though his stuff may not agree with certain senses of humor, I think that there is at least one joke for everyone, however, there is almost certainly a cringe-worthy moment for everyone as well. Thirdly, his improv is quite high standard (excluding the Jake part)and found it generally added to his performance. Finally, his observations are quite good, and though many of his observations were not specific to my context, he managed to draw the audience in to his point of view. Top Stuff.

I am not an avid fan of Dane Cook, and I saw his stand-up special not on purpose but when I was browsing through the channels to find something to watch. Like it or not, I found his special to be hilarious. Yes he did over do somethings and yes he did some unnecessary things. Despite those flaws, Dane Cook's special was still enjoyable.Almost half of the special was made up of verbal jokes and physical humor, where he impersonated his ex, his co-workers and so on.He talked about different things, starting from lying to fighting with his girlfriend and the differences between guys and girls. DC is outrageous and hilarious.

DANE COOK: VICIOUS CIRCLE was the severely overrated HBO debut of red-hot stand up comedian Dane Cook, wisely filmed in his hometown to make him seem a lot funnier than he really is. Cook was first introduced to HBO audiences with the dreadfully boring documentary TOURGASM which was then capped off with this comedy concert filmed in Cook's hometown of Boston. Apparently, Bostonians find this guy hysterically funny because the audience at this concert is shown going out of their minds at every single word that comes out of this guy's mouth and I just didn't get. Cook seems full of himself, self-congratulatory, and madly in love with the sound of his own voice. The nucleus of some very funny material is here, but Cook blows everything way out of proportion...the guy lakes twenty-minutes to tell a five minute joke and his material hardly merits the 90 minutes (!) that HBO gave him while really funny guys like Chris Rock and DL Hughley only get 60 minutes. For hard-core Cook fans only.

If you are a fan of Dane Cook's then you'll definitely love this. It's just a lot of Dane being Dane. And it's GREAT. There's old material thrown in with a lot of new stuff. And all of it is great. He even uses one of his old jokes in a new one. It's a great blend. It's also a pretty decent length of a show, about an hour & a half long. I'd say if you get the chance, watch the uncut version on DVD too. There's about 40-50 extra minutes in the "DANE-gerous" version. Including an encore, some extentions on a few of the bits that aired on the HBO special, and a few completely new things. I have to give Vicious Circle a 10/10 for pure excellence. I quote VC every day. It's great and even if you're not a fan of Dane Cook's this might turn you into one.