Craig Ferguson: Just Being Honest (2015)

Starring: Craig Ferguson
Grade: B-

Anytime a comedian says they’re going to offend people when the show starts, I know it’s not going to be bad. You shouldn’t have to say it. The preferred way to do shocking and offensive humor is to layer it into the comedy without warning. If you feel the need to warn people, they will brace themselves, expect worse, and not get it. Same is the case with Just Being Honest. Thankfully, Craig Ferguson still knows how to be funny. He may consider himself “offensive”, but I think he’s pretty tame compared to some other names in comedy.

Summary

After an opening where we see Craig Ferguson walk through the halls of the theater before the show, he comes out to an excited New York crowd, with a big sign behind him on stage emblazoned with the words “New York”.

This leads into the sign being the first thing he talks about. Ferguson talks about this one joke he has that he thinks is the greatest ever but quickly moves onto topic after topic at a pace us Late Late Show fans are used to. Next, he goes on about being a patriotic American and the development of his famous catchphrase (“It’s a great day for America”). Following this, he touches on shingles and people being offended. This is where he argues you can say whatever you want if you say beforehand, “I’m not judging. I’m just being honest”. He uses this to criticize religion and follows it up with his annoyance with those “shoes that look like feet” design.

I’m on his side on that one. I never understood why that craze caught on for as long as it did.

Ferguson moves onto Hackey sack being called “foot bag” in Scotland, having sex with a melon, social media, music, and Kenny G. He milks the Kenny G stuff for everything it’s worth and for the most part, it’s more amusing than you would think because of Ferguson’s energy on stage. After giving the spotlight guy shit for missing him when he was walking on stage, he attacks today’s music, being in his 50s, his face looking like a ball sack, plastic surgery, and going to a nude beach when he was in his 20s in Portugal and how most of the beach consisted of overweight Germans. This gave me the biggest laugh of the special up until that point because as we Craig Ferguson fans know, anytime he implies something perverted, he usually does it in a German accent. It’s funny to me every time. Here, he explains the reason. It’s because in 1983, after going to a peep show, he went to a gay bar and got hit on by a gay German man who told him the dirtiest thing he’s ever heard: “Can I kiss you where it stinks, and I don’t mean Cleveland”.

Well…

Next, he talks about the age-old rumor of Richard Gere having an affinity for sticking a rodent up his ass for pleasure, how the horrible Twister screenplay inspired him to write his own screenplays, and how it led to him working with Mick Jagger on a potential movie idea Jagger had. Unbeknownst to Jagger, it was basically The Prince and the Pauper. This is where the special started to catch fire because Ferguson’s excitable storytelling ability is second to none. He talks about his meeting in Istanbul with Jagger, going to a party with him, how the project fell apart, and how much of a badass and leader Keith Richards is. As things wind down, he talks about his doctor (who tends to say “Say my name bitch” for his prostate exams), taking a laxative, and taking legal drugs administered by a hospital. He finishes the show with the “greatest joke” he was talking about in the opening and honestly, it was worth the wait.

My Thoughts:

Just Being Honest is very much reminiscent of Craig Ferguson’s later years on The Late Late Show. From the energy to the laughing at his own jokes (he does it in a charming way though), the fun rambling where you think he’s gone off the rails but always comes back, and everything in-between shows he’s just as sharp as ever. Even so, it’s not his best work. It starts off a little rough because he has to get some shtick out of the way of how he’s going to be offensive and all that, but his unwavering energy and delivery are there from the start, which does save things. Once he gets away from the old man jokes that seem to plague older comedians (mostly because they sound similar), he starts going on his storytelling rants, and we’re off to the races. This has always been his bread and butter, with every aside he interrupts with being just as funny as the main story. As I mentioned in the summary, the nudist beach story had me laughing out loud. Things started warming up after this, really sparking up with the ridiculousness of the Richard Gere stuff. Then, he caught fire with the Mick Jagger story and for the most part, he keeps this momentum going until the end.

Ferguson’s constant use of callbacks, impressions, and observational jokes he’s made famous on the Late Late Show were very evident here, so if you’re a fan, you’ll still be (at the very least) smiling throughout Just Being Honest. I know I was. I chuckled every time he did the Mick Jagger impression, complete with the exaggerated walk and the “tiny hands” joke he referenced about a hundred times. I don’t if it’s because he’s one of my favorite comedians or what, but I laughed every time he mentioned it, along with the cab driver joke. He couldn’t do a Turkish accent, so he did a Dracula impression. Despite this sounding stupid on paper, he made it work with his classic mile-a-minute pace he works at and a smile that can get anyone to laugh. Also, the Jagger story was genuinely interesting too. I don’t know how much of it is true, but if it is, it’s pretty crazy to think about. I loved how Jagger kept on talking about how dark and edgy he wanted the screenplay to be, so Ferguson made the lead character a serial killer with Tourette’s syndrome and got fired for it.

I did not understand the stylistic choice of the black-and-white walkway shots. Sometimes, Ferguson would turn away to the left side of stage, and it would be on a black-and-white camera for some reason. It didn’t make much sense. It happens inconsistently and has nothing to do with Craig’s reaction or the punchline of the joke either. I’m not sure what the significance of this idea was. It just came off as unnecessary.

For lifelong fans of Ferguson, you’ll like it. To any passive viewer wanting to see what Craig is about, you’ll laugh a decent amount but will chalk this down as a solid endeavor. This is mostly because his ramblings and random approach to his comedy looks unrehearsed to an outsider’s perspective, and it may not hit as much if you’re unfamiliar with his work. With that being said, Craig Ferguson: Just Being Honest is still a relatively decent showing of the man I still consider the “King of Late Night (during the modern era)”.