Chris Tucker Live (2015)

Starring: Chris Tucker
Grade: C

It’s been way too long since we’ve seen Chris Tucker on stage. Even if the jokes weren’t the best or anything, seeing Chris Tucker Live was a great reminder as to why audiences across the world fell in love with him.

Summary

To open, we see some pictures of Chris Tucker through the years starting from when he was a kid on.

Next, we see him get on stage for the first time in years. It’s a relief not only for us, but it looks like it affects him too. He then jumps right into it touching topics such as girls changing as soon as you get married, his experiences dating younger women, foreign women, and the differences between dating white women and black women. Following this, he talks about being spontaneous and surprising your girl with quickies (which was actually pretty funny) and asking the wrong people for advice on marriage. Saying this gives us the amusing line of, “Be careful who you listen to because that’s the last time I let Wesley Snipes help me out with my taxes”. The small anecdotes of him hanging out with Snipes is really funny too, in all of its irony. He segues into talking about the crazy stuff he did with some of his early fortune, dealing with the tax collector, arguing credit card bills and realizing how stupid some of the stuff he was buying. Along with this, he talks about asking for money you’re owed, and Oprah, along with a funny story of visiting her at her house with other celebrities and how she would keep everyone outside.

Then, he talks about more relatable topics like not trusting McDonald’s, cops being “childish” and a scenario where he’s a smartass to a cop, with a bonus joke of the classic situation where you think you’re being pulled over, but the cop gets someone else.

After this, he goes over everything involving Michael Jackson including Neverland, Jackson’s love of Rick Ross, 50 Cent’s “In Da Club”, and a particularly amusing story of himself hanging with Jackson and Barry Gibb of The Bee Gees. He also addresses the rumors of him being in the next Friday movie but says he’s not because he wasn’t paid for the first film, saying Ice Cube only gave him CDs and weed.

This is a pretty funny way to get me disappointed as a Friday fan.

After this, Tucker talks about his family and how the initial reaction to him getting money was them assuming they don’t have to work anymore. He touches on his family wanting money and his early life like how him and his siblings weren’t really being bothered by their parents divorcing at a young age because the result gave them more room in the house. There’s this and the fact that they could watch TV more with dad gone because “Ain’t nobody wanting to watch no damn Dallas“. Going along with stories on his father, he also talks about working for him at a young age, and him and his brother getting his ass beat by him. Tucker uses this to bring up how he’s the youngest of six children and how much he used to act up in school, which isn’t very surprising at all. Following this, he talks about being friends with the principal, playing football and sucking at it, playing cards with his dad, his strict mom leaving him in the mall after he got lost, and a kidnapping scenario. The last part focuses on his mom taking them to church and an elaborate story of him accidentally eating food she made for herself and the very funny aftermath. Of course, all the types of people involved in church are discussed. To conclude the special, Tucker mentions going to Africa (the Cheetah in the hotel bit was amusing), being friends with Bill Clinton and his incredible impression of him, Barack Obama, black news reporters not going overseas, and Obama losing control of Michelle.

My Thoughts:

What Chris Tucker proves with Chris Tucker Live is that he’s still got that “It” factor. He can say shit that really isn’t funny but get away with it because of his perfect delivery, funny voice, animated presence, and facial expressions that speak a thousand words. In fact, he does everything here perfect, except for the actual joke writing part.

So, let’s look at the positives. His impressions are still very funny, especially his Michael Jackson one. His impression of an old man is essentially John Witherspoon, but it’s still pretty good. He’s still a great dancer and him miming scenarios out for us with his abundance of energy is still just as amusing as it was in the 90s. As I said before, his delivery is still top notch because no one sounds as funny as Chris Tucker. He just has that little bit of “extra” that can make a good comedian, a great one. It’s a shame though because the joke writing is noticeably subpar. You would think he’d come up with better stuff since he had like 20 years to come up with a good set, but it was fairly unimpressive. He relied entirely on his funny delivery, random screaming, and bugged-out eyes to make a pretty average routine seem a lot better than it is.

Look, I love Chris Tucker as much as anyone else, but you can’t sit there and tell me this stand-up special is anything to write home about. It has a lot of funny moments, but the whole time, you’re waiting for one big moment to either cap the payoff to a joke or make the special hit the threshold of a higher tier. Unfortunately, it never comes. The closest he got to that “great” joke was almost at the very end of the special, when he notes that Obama never answers a question. He just walks around it by responding “…Look…”. This may sound mundane, but it was actually really funny. It’s still very clear Chris Tucker excels as a performer. There’s no argument there. Sadly, his actual joke writing in this special is not as good as I thought it would be after all these years. The reason to watch Chris Tucker Live is to see Tucker doing stand-up again. This in itself is awesome to see. I just wish he came back with a routine that was worth the wait.

*The post-credits show Tucker touring around the world. It’s a pretty cool way to end the special.*