Dane Cook: Vicious Circle (2006)

Starring: Dane Cook
Grade: C-

Back when Dane Cook was one of the most popular comedians in the country, he couldn’t be touched. His bits were mimicked by everyone you knew. However, when people did mimic it, you realized that the jokes weren’t really that funny. Cook was just a great performer. His material wasn’t great, he was just great at delivering it all and getting the most out of every sentence. Dane Cook: Vicious Circle is a perfect example of this.

Summary

The topics Cook covers are very relatable. Early on, he touches on things like lying, getting directions, and crying, and he talks about them very accurately, making fun of how human beings react in these situations. It’s actually funny how accurate it is. Then again, you tend to nod more than you laugh. He’s right, it’s just that it’s not very funny, joke-wise. What is impressive is how he’s able to stretch these topics into such an elaborate and elongated way, something he does throughout the special. However, it could’ve been a lot funnier if he was able to say something without laughing at his own setup for every fucking joke. It didn’t matter to the audience though. They were hanging onto his every word, especially at the beginning. They were cheering at everything he was saying. They weren’t even laughing. It was cheering like you were at a concert.

Honestly, it was a great reminder for how popular Cook was back in the day. People today don’t even realize.

Later in his performance, he started to heat up a little bit. The religious debate with the sneezing atheist was chuckle-worthy, but I’ll admit I was laughing at the whole fake scenario of the lumberjack knocking over the tree that the atheist became after he died (it’ll make more sense in-context). This was more because of Cook acting the whole thing out with his energetic performance, which saves a lot of his jokes. Because of this, I guarantee that if you listen to just the audio, you will not laugh nearly as much as watching Cook in front of your screen. Watching Dane Cook performing stand-up needs to be observed to get the full performance, not just listened to. If you’re just listening to audio, his poor joke telling abilities will be exposed. Regardless, he continues his elongated stories, and he exits himself from the joke with a million side bars. They usually aren’t funny either. It’s just him critiquing his own storytelling ability. He does it constantly too. The only funny one’s were about him pantomiming typing, and him having as many keys as a janitor. It just gets sort of annoying how long it takes for him to get to a punchline, and but since he knows he has the crowd eating out of his hand, he just pauses at the crowd like “Yeah that’s right. Cheer for me”.

He covers some other topics like his dad owning too small of a robe, a “relationshit” (which is admittedly a great phrase), arguing with your spouse and women’s power in them (the “My father’s a brilliant man!” line definitely had me laughing), and men’s horrible response to women winning arguments, which is capped off hilariously with him mentioning how men have a blind rage and they don’t even remember the layout to their own house in frustration. They then excessively cuss, as they argue with no point. This is another super accurate critique, and it was one of the very few jokes that actually evoked legitimate laughter. There’s also the “B & E” and its aftermath, cheating, going to the movies, one-night stands, jerking off, and a random drunk fan named Jake that interrupts the whole performance to talk to Cook, who responds positively. It’s not necessarily funny, but if this wasn’t a plant, it’s pretty interesting that it made it into the special.

The funny part was how poor security was for this thing. Cook runs up and down the aisles like a rock star before, during, and after the performance without much backing. That’s something we’ll probably never see again.

My Thoughts:

Let me start off by saying that I don’t hate Cook. I appreciate his prime. You don’t sell out that many arenas without being somewhat good at what you’re doing. It’s as simple as that. It’s just, with this recent re-watching of his 2006 special, I couldn’t help but notice how little I actually laughed. Don’t get me wrong, I smiled throughout, but there were only a few instances of genuine laughter. His energy is infectious though. He is able to milk every single bit of his to extreme levels and it’s impressive. His long-form storytelling dominates the hour and thirty-minute special and though it’s incredible to see how much energy he puts into his movements, constant pacing, and character work, the truly impressive part is how he’s able to create such a lively story with such simple setups or topics.

Despite all the distractions and side bars he adds himself, Cook is still able to jump right back into his stories with absolute ease, and I have to give him credit because that is hard to do. There’s clearly a lot of rehearsing that goes into this to be able to do it that easily. It’s easy to be thrown off as a comedian, but he seems to be ready for anything. Also, I have to give praise to the technical director behind the scenes. Having to switch the main camera that many times to cover the many quick reactions, head turns, and movements of the constantly active Cook is a hard job to do. Whoever covered the cameras did an incredible job of catching all the action.

As a whole, Dane Cook: Vicious Circle has some very funny moments, but this is more due to Cook’s abilities as an over-actor and his incredible energy on stage. The running time is longer, which is perfect for his style of joke-telling but ironically, it exposes his style at the same time. His ability to drag everything out would be great at parties, telling stories to a group. Sadly, it just wears thin as stand-up material. On a positive note, there’s a certain sense of unpredictability that makes his stand-up very watchable and him very likable. Does it stand the test of time? Unfortunately, it doesn’t, but I don’t know. You had to be there.

Say what you want about him, but Vicious Circle has moments where you understand why Dane Cook was on top of the comedy world at one point in time.