Lisa Lampanelli – Dirty Girl DVD

Lisa Lampanelli
Dirty Girl
Stand-up Comedy DVD
Warner Brothers Nashville / Jack Records 2007
65 minutes

Lisa Lampanelli is a Dirty Girl. This stand-up comedy DVD’s title says it all. The stand-up comedienne comes out in Wizard of Oz Dorothy shoes and a dress even a drag queen Lampanelli impersonator would say is too much and wastes no time offending so that within five minutes she has picked on soccer moms, homos, Asians and Indians “Not Slurpee Indian, Casino Indian”, making sure it is clear to everyone why she is called the Queen of Mean.

Insult Comedy is a matter of taste (often like chicken) but if you enjoy mouthfuls of dick jokes and Greyhound buses of racial slurs, a comic who picks on the audience and has the ability to come up with a slam and repartee for anyone she addresses, Dirty Girl is a stand-up comedy you will enjoy. Still, it is a good thing Lampanelli, the Queen of Mean, has  a plan for if God decides to strike back and make her either deaf or blind -and considering she is an excellent insult comic, this is wise career planning.

Lisa Lampanelli is very good at what she does. Granted, by now the audience knows what it is setting itself up for, but way back when and even now on the Dirty Girl DVD being able to put together a sixty-some minute act of jokes about Blacks, Hispanics, Jews, Asians, gays, and the occasional white folks soccer moms without crossing whatever the line is has to be a tour de force balancing act.

Not every joke on this DVD works but then again if you are not made at least uncomfortable or even offended a couple of times you do not get the point. The audience gets the point. In many ways, it seems to dare Lampanelli to push the envelope and encourages her by reeling back and then laughing.

I am less impressed with a woman in her forties using a rap artist delivery and hand signals too many times. It feels staged. Also, the Queen of Mean seems to break rhythm sometimes by tossing in bits she presents as jokes. The jokes themselves are right up her alley but do not flow as smoothly as the rest of her material.

Her bit about her experience on the Pamela Anderson Roast requires having seen the show to fully get the impact of the jokes. Her idea for her own sitcom is funny but she does go on too long with her TV experiences.

The dating segment of the show slows it down a bit but it picks up soon after.

Lisa Lampanelli Dirty Girl is a very good stand-up comedy DVD if you have a solid constitution. The trick is to realize that these are jokes. 65 minutes of this kind of comedy is, however, somewhat exhausting.

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