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Blue Collar Comedy Tour: The Movie
Warner Bros. // PG-13 // June 3, 2003
List Price: $26.97 [Buy now and save at Amazon]
Stand-up comedians Jeff Foxworthy, Bill Engvall, Ron White, and Larry the Cable Guy have spent the past few years teamed together as part of the Blue Collar Comedy Tour, playing to sold-out crowds, grossing over $12 million, and resulting in a successful live album. The movie of the same name features a performance at Phoenix' Dodge Theater in July 2002. The blurbs on the box art push the "redneck comedy" angle, but there's more to The Blue Collar Comedy Tour than jokes about incest and NASCAR. Oh, sure, there are jokes about incest and NASCAR, but like a lot of comedians, the humor mostly revolves around very ordinary events in their lives. Marriage, raising kids, airplanes, with quips about woodland creatures gnawing off chunks of flesh tossed in for good measure. The performers may all have Southern accents, but for the most part, their material is accessible enough that it'll appear to more than just the Miller High Life set.
The first two performers are Ron White and Larry the Cable Guy. White is literally not seen in the entire length of the movie without a cigarette or drink in his hand, and when he first takes the stage, he's holding both. His set includes gags about televangelism, unreliable airplanes ("'Hey man, if one of these engines fails, how far will the other one take us?' All the way to the scene of the crash."), Texas' approach to the death penalty, peeing in the Salt River, and nekkid wimmin.
Larry the Cable Guy isn't a comedian so much as a cariacture, the only of the four to definitively fit the redneck stereotype. Though he's responsible for some of the biggest laughs in the taped interludes and the four-man encore, Larry's exaggerated performance on-stage is the weakest of the four. In between chants of "git 'er done" and "I don't care who you are, that's funny", Larry's material includes musings on underbritches what's edible 'n with holes what in them, the lovely women in his life ("I had one girl had a beauty mark on her cheek. That 'uz pretty sexy, like Cindy Crawford. We git to kissin' and stuff, and I's lookin' at it. It was a tick! I know. I disappeared like a set of rims at a Puff Daddy concert."), luxuries at Petsmart, excessive piercings, and feminine-friendly NASCAR sponsors.
The headliners get more time on stage, beginning with Bill Engvall. If the name doesn't ring a bell, his trademark "here's your sign" gags ought to. Most of his material revolves around his family, beginning with his recently-licensed daughter, dealing with her inept driving, skimpy underwear, goth friends, and dating. Jokes about his son include 'the wiener thief', his discovery of Internet pornography, and a one-sided heart-to-heart sex talk. Engvall also chats about resorting to acupuncture to help him quit smoking and the annoyances of camping. He rounds out the set ranting about marriage and how the passion peters out over time. "Remember that first year of marriage? You'd pick a fight just so you could make up and have sex. Twenty years later, you pick a fight just so they'll sleep in the other room."
At half an hour, Jeff Foxworthy gets the longest set of the bunch and deservedly so. Though the other three comedians net a pretty decent number of laughs, I found their material to be a bit more hit-or-miss. Foxworthy's set is more consistently funny, beginning with rants about extreme weather, excessive restrictions on airplanes (leaf blowers and Coleman lanterns are strictly forbidden), wearing out rental cars, and the fiery emotions inspired by NASCAR. Though he saves the "y'might be a redneck..." bits for the encore, Foxworthy does incorporate some redneck humor into his set, including a story about a wedding rehearsal dinner at Hooter's and his redneck glossary ("Aorta: Aorta cut that grass down by the ball field so them kids don't get hurt"). A lot of his jokes are centered around the number of girls in his extended family, including their candidness about spider veins, the prevalence of car seats and the lack of 'em growing up, and the dreaded trip down the cereal aisle ("Little kids buy cereal the same way grown men buy lingerie: they will buy stuff they care nothing about just to get to the prize that's inside."). He also bursts into tirades about the dangerous toys he had as a kid like wood-burning kids and lawn darts, followed by each gender's approach to the butt. The absolute best is a story he was told by a couple involving a bloody encounter with what seemed to be roadkill.
Instead of just consisting of stand-up material, The Blue Collar Comedy Tour includes brief bits of footage following the four comedians hanging out together, most of which seem at least partially staged. The movie kicks off with David Allen Grier chauffeuring 'em to the show and tossing in a nod to The Original Kings of Comedy. Later, they stroll into a Victoria's Secret with supermodel Heidi Klum tending the counter, test out a remote-control farting machine in a mall, chat in a Waffle House, spend an afternoon at a spa, and clown around in a sporting goods store. These are some of the weakest portions of the movie, but unlike the similar interludes on Comedy Central's Pulp Comics series, they manage to get a couple of laughs and don't interrupt the comedians' performances.
The comedians close out The Blue Collar Comedy Tour with a half-hour encore, and although I thought the movie up to that point was funny, the material in the encore is even better. It begins with the four comics swapping stories, such as cheering up a mole-covered sister with a trip to the flea market and getting physically tossed out for wearing a hat to a bar in New York. Engvall's "here's your sign" and Foxworthy's "you might be a redneck if..." bits are saved for the end, and the other comedians take a stab at those trademarks and toss in their own. A lot of it doesn't have the rehearsed, polished feel of their sets, and that more laid-back, natural approach makes it all the more entertaining.
As successful as The Blue Collar Comedy Tour was on the road, its feature-length film incarnation didn't get a wide release theatrically. As certain as the movie is to attract a larger audience on home video, some fans are likely to be disappointed with its treatment on DVD.
Video: Cue the Joe Sixpack jokes, but The Blue Collar Comedy Tour has been formatted to fit your screen, and Warner doesn't have 16x9 adopters in mind. The tour was shot on high-def video and exhibited in widescreen theatrically. Even the trailer on the DVD's website is widescreen, but for whatever reason, it was decided to crop the movie for its home video release. Below are a couple of comparison shots of the widescreen trailer and the DVD. My timing was a bit off on each, but hey, you get the general idea.
So, although The Blue Collar Comedy Tour has clearly been cropped, how does that affect the movie? Not all that much, to be honest. If I'd gone into the movie without having that "modified..." disclaimer splattered across the screen (and, well, if I didn't know that HD cameras generally shoot widescreen), I probably wouldn't have thought anything of the 1.33:1 aspect ratio. Most of the movie just follows a single guy walking across a stage, and since people kind of have a tendency to be taller than they are wide, the center-cropping isn't particularly noticeable. Even the off-stage footage and the encore that brings all four comedians on-stage together didn't seem cramped or tight. The only shots that seemed really off to me after the cropping were those of the audience. It's also worth noting that portions of the intro and the closing credits are letterboxed to varying degrees.
Semi-coherent rants about aspect ratios aside, The Blue Collar Comedy Tour looks damn near perfect. The image is razor-sharp and exceptionally detailed, and colors are spot-on. Since the movie was shot on video, the presentation is accordingly free of any nicks, speckles, print damage, or other flaws frequently associated with film-based transfers.
I know there's a pretty rabid, vocal group of "give me OAR or give me death" home theater enthuasiasts out there, and...hell, I'm generally one of 'em, but The Blue Collar Comedy Tour is one case where the impact of the cropping really is negligible and alone shouldn't discourage anyone from a purchase. Since the movie is presented on a single-sided, single-layer disc and has space to spare, there's really not much of an excuse for not including both versions, though.
Audio: The Blue Collar Comedy Tour features a great Dolby Digital 5.1 soundtrack (448Kbps). The audio takes advantage of the various speakers scattered throughout the room and does an excellent job making it seem as if I'm in the middle of a monstrous stand-up audience. The performers themselves keep to the front channels, with slight reverb in the rears. Crowd noise and laughter roar from most every speaker. Given the nature of the material, it's not an overwhelming surprise that the LFE doesn't get much of a workout aside from what little music is strewn throughout the movie. The focus of the mix is, of course, the comedians, and their material comes through perfectly. A nice soundtrack.
The disc also includes closed captioning as well as subtitles in French and Spanish. I kind of doubt the comedy translates all that well, but hey, the option's there if you want it.
Supplements: Unlike most of the other notable recent stand-up releases to have hit theaters over the past couple of years -- The Original Kings of Comedy, Runteldat, The Original Queens of Comedy, and Comedian -- The Blue Collar Comedy Tour doesn't feature much in the way of extras. A set of very brief bios for the four comedians and director C.B. Harding are the extent of it. No outtakes, no deleted scenes, not even so much as a trailer. The lack of a trailer is particularly odd since Warner features one on the DVD's website.
As is the standard for Warner Bros. DVD releases, The Blue Collar Comedy Tour comes packaged in a snapper case, and the inside flap lists the eighteen chapter stops. Although the same can't be said for the movie itself, the disc's static menus are enhanced for 16x9 displays.
Conclusion: This DVD release of The Blue Collar Comedy Tour doesn't really warrant its list price of $26.97, due in part to a modified full-frame presentation and minimal extras. Fans of the comedians as well as owners of the live CD ought to find this disc well-worth a purchase. Otherwise, I'd still recommend checking out The Blue Collar Comedy Tour, but a rental would probably be the best bet.
Related Links: The Blue Collar Comedy Tour website has a little more about the DVD, including an image gallery and a trailer that can be viewed in a variety of different video formats. The trailer runs two minutes and eight seconds, and unlike the DVD, it's presented at an aspect ratio of 1.85:1.
The comedians -- Larry the Cable Guy, Ron White, Bill Engvall, and Jeff Foxworthy -- each have their own official websites as well.
The first two performers are Ron White and Larry the Cable Guy. White is literally not seen in the entire length of the movie without a cigarette or drink in his hand, and when he first takes the stage, he's holding both. His set includes gags about televangelism, unreliable airplanes ("'Hey man, if one of these engines fails, how far will the other one take us?' All the way to the scene of the crash."), Texas' approach to the death penalty, peeing in the Salt River, and nekkid wimmin.
Larry the Cable Guy isn't a comedian so much as a cariacture, the only of the four to definitively fit the redneck stereotype. Though he's responsible for some of the biggest laughs in the taped interludes and the four-man encore, Larry's exaggerated performance on-stage is the weakest of the four. In between chants of "git 'er done" and "I don't care who you are, that's funny", Larry's material includes musings on underbritches what's edible 'n with holes what in them, the lovely women in his life ("I had one girl had a beauty mark on her cheek. That 'uz pretty sexy, like Cindy Crawford. We git to kissin' and stuff, and I's lookin' at it. It was a tick! I know. I disappeared like a set of rims at a Puff Daddy concert."), luxuries at Petsmart, excessive piercings, and feminine-friendly NASCAR sponsors.
The headliners get more time on stage, beginning with Bill Engvall. If the name doesn't ring a bell, his trademark "here's your sign" gags ought to. Most of his material revolves around his family, beginning with his recently-licensed daughter, dealing with her inept driving, skimpy underwear, goth friends, and dating. Jokes about his son include 'the wiener thief', his discovery of Internet pornography, and a one-sided heart-to-heart sex talk. Engvall also chats about resorting to acupuncture to help him quit smoking and the annoyances of camping. He rounds out the set ranting about marriage and how the passion peters out over time. "Remember that first year of marriage? You'd pick a fight just so you could make up and have sex. Twenty years later, you pick a fight just so they'll sleep in the other room."
At half an hour, Jeff Foxworthy gets the longest set of the bunch and deservedly so. Though the other three comedians net a pretty decent number of laughs, I found their material to be a bit more hit-or-miss. Foxworthy's set is more consistently funny, beginning with rants about extreme weather, excessive restrictions on airplanes (leaf blowers and Coleman lanterns are strictly forbidden), wearing out rental cars, and the fiery emotions inspired by NASCAR. Though he saves the "y'might be a redneck..." bits for the encore, Foxworthy does incorporate some redneck humor into his set, including a story about a wedding rehearsal dinner at Hooter's and his redneck glossary ("Aorta: Aorta cut that grass down by the ball field so them kids don't get hurt"). A lot of his jokes are centered around the number of girls in his extended family, including their candidness about spider veins, the prevalence of car seats and the lack of 'em growing up, and the dreaded trip down the cereal aisle ("Little kids buy cereal the same way grown men buy lingerie: they will buy stuff they care nothing about just to get to the prize that's inside."). He also bursts into tirades about the dangerous toys he had as a kid like wood-burning kids and lawn darts, followed by each gender's approach to the butt. The absolute best is a story he was told by a couple involving a bloody encounter with what seemed to be roadkill.
Instead of just consisting of stand-up material, The Blue Collar Comedy Tour includes brief bits of footage following the four comedians hanging out together, most of which seem at least partially staged. The movie kicks off with David Allen Grier chauffeuring 'em to the show and tossing in a nod to The Original Kings of Comedy. Later, they stroll into a Victoria's Secret with supermodel Heidi Klum tending the counter, test out a remote-control farting machine in a mall, chat in a Waffle House, spend an afternoon at a spa, and clown around in a sporting goods store. These are some of the weakest portions of the movie, but unlike the similar interludes on Comedy Central's Pulp Comics series, they manage to get a couple of laughs and don't interrupt the comedians' performances.
The comedians close out The Blue Collar Comedy Tour with a half-hour encore, and although I thought the movie up to that point was funny, the material in the encore is even better. It begins with the four comics swapping stories, such as cheering up a mole-covered sister with a trip to the flea market and getting physically tossed out for wearing a hat to a bar in New York. Engvall's "here's your sign" and Foxworthy's "you might be a redneck if..." bits are saved for the end, and the other comedians take a stab at those trademarks and toss in their own. A lot of it doesn't have the rehearsed, polished feel of their sets, and that more laid-back, natural approach makes it all the more entertaining.
As successful as The Blue Collar Comedy Tour was on the road, its feature-length film incarnation didn't get a wide release theatrically. As certain as the movie is to attract a larger audience on home video, some fans are likely to be disappointed with its treatment on DVD.
Video: Cue the Joe Sixpack jokes, but The Blue Collar Comedy Tour has been formatted to fit your screen, and Warner doesn't have 16x9 adopters in mind. The tour was shot on high-def video and exhibited in widescreen theatrically. Even the trailer on the DVD's website is widescreen, but for whatever reason, it was decided to crop the movie for its home video release. Below are a couple of comparison shots of the widescreen trailer and the DVD. My timing was a bit off on each, but hey, you get the general idea.
So, although The Blue Collar Comedy Tour has clearly been cropped, how does that affect the movie? Not all that much, to be honest. If I'd gone into the movie without having that "modified..." disclaimer splattered across the screen (and, well, if I didn't know that HD cameras generally shoot widescreen), I probably wouldn't have thought anything of the 1.33:1 aspect ratio. Most of the movie just follows a single guy walking across a stage, and since people kind of have a tendency to be taller than they are wide, the center-cropping isn't particularly noticeable. Even the off-stage footage and the encore that brings all four comedians on-stage together didn't seem cramped or tight. The only shots that seemed really off to me after the cropping were those of the audience. It's also worth noting that portions of the intro and the closing credits are letterboxed to varying degrees.
Semi-coherent rants about aspect ratios aside, The Blue Collar Comedy Tour looks damn near perfect. The image is razor-sharp and exceptionally detailed, and colors are spot-on. Since the movie was shot on video, the presentation is accordingly free of any nicks, speckles, print damage, or other flaws frequently associated with film-based transfers.
I know there's a pretty rabid, vocal group of "give me OAR or give me death" home theater enthuasiasts out there, and...hell, I'm generally one of 'em, but The Blue Collar Comedy Tour is one case where the impact of the cropping really is negligible and alone shouldn't discourage anyone from a purchase. Since the movie is presented on a single-sided, single-layer disc and has space to spare, there's really not much of an excuse for not including both versions, though.
Audio: The Blue Collar Comedy Tour features a great Dolby Digital 5.1 soundtrack (448Kbps). The audio takes advantage of the various speakers scattered throughout the room and does an excellent job making it seem as if I'm in the middle of a monstrous stand-up audience. The performers themselves keep to the front channels, with slight reverb in the rears. Crowd noise and laughter roar from most every speaker. Given the nature of the material, it's not an overwhelming surprise that the LFE doesn't get much of a workout aside from what little music is strewn throughout the movie. The focus of the mix is, of course, the comedians, and their material comes through perfectly. A nice soundtrack.
The disc also includes closed captioning as well as subtitles in French and Spanish. I kind of doubt the comedy translates all that well, but hey, the option's there if you want it.
Supplements: Unlike most of the other notable recent stand-up releases to have hit theaters over the past couple of years -- The Original Kings of Comedy, Runteldat, The Original Queens of Comedy, and Comedian -- The Blue Collar Comedy Tour doesn't feature much in the way of extras. A set of very brief bios for the four comedians and director C.B. Harding are the extent of it. No outtakes, no deleted scenes, not even so much as a trailer. The lack of a trailer is particularly odd since Warner features one on the DVD's website.
As is the standard for Warner Bros. DVD releases, The Blue Collar Comedy Tour comes packaged in a snapper case, and the inside flap lists the eighteen chapter stops. Although the same can't be said for the movie itself, the disc's static menus are enhanced for 16x9 displays.
Conclusion: This DVD release of The Blue Collar Comedy Tour doesn't really warrant its list price of $26.97, due in part to a modified full-frame presentation and minimal extras. Fans of the comedians as well as owners of the live CD ought to find this disc well-worth a purchase. Otherwise, I'd still recommend checking out The Blue Collar Comedy Tour, but a rental would probably be the best bet.
Related Links: The Blue Collar Comedy Tour website has a little more about the DVD, including an image gallery and a trailer that can be viewed in a variety of different video formats. The trailer runs two minutes and eight seconds, and unlike the DVD, it's presented at an aspect ratio of 1.85:1.
The comedians -- Larry the Cable Guy, Ron White, Bill Engvall, and Jeff Foxworthy -- each have their own official websites as well.
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