Hilarious CD version
Louis C.K.
Stand-up Comedy CD
Comedy Central 2011

Louis CK is one of the highest acclaimed comedians working today.  He’s had a very successful career performing stand-up comedy, writing comedy, and acting in comedy.  It goes without saying that he knows comedy.  That being said,  his latest stand-up comedy CD, Hilarious,  is not the best representation of what he can do.

The best part is, you will still laugh, and you will laugh a lot, and you will laugh hard.  It’s almost unfair how funny Louis CK can be when he’s doing his mediocre material.  He finds ways of making unfunny things funny without sounding like a complete jackass (most  of the time).  With that gift, he pulls every bit of comedy he can get out of every subject he talks about and the amount he can pull off is often unbelievable.

The show starts with a strangely dark opening about the multitudes of dead people there are in the world and comparing Adolf Hitler to Ray Charles.  Yes, even this is hilarious.  That shows how much talent he has.  He goes on from there to talk about how very physically disgusting and stupid he is.  CK loves to hate himself, and most of the material on these subjects is excellent.

CK also loves to talk about how impatient people are, which leads to one of the best tracks on Hilarious, Cell Phones and Flying.  The joke deals with how people are so quick to criticize technological things that are so advanced they might as well be magic to most people.  This track concludes the first excellent half of the album, and it’s here where CK s set starts to go downhill.

Tracks like Taking Sexual Inventory and Other People’s Kids are mediocre at best because the rants are more about anger than they are about humor, while tracks like The Way We Talk and My 3-Year Old is a 3-Year Old have many funny parts, but are way too long.

The highlight of the second half of Louis CK Hilarious is the end of My 7-Year Old is Better Than Me, where CK tells an incredibly funny anecdote about his daughter’s first encounter with a pony.  It’s a very funny, well-told story that is definitely worth hearing.

If you’re an avid listener of Louis CK, this stand-up comedy CD will be very funny, but a bit of a disappointment.  If not, then Hilarious is going to be exactly what it promises.

Hilarious CD version
Louis C.K.
Stand-up Comedy CD
Comedy Central 2011

 

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