Synopsis :
Actually, you can make Jo Koy angry. He sounds like a really nice fellow, all things considered. He's actually referring to his son, who likes to draw green monster faces on his…ah…"ting ting." In a nutshell, this is Jo Koy—a charming blend of Cosby-esque ruminations on fatherhood and parenthood, mixed with modern comedic observations about sex and curse words aplenty. The old school meets the new school.
With his nervous laughs, spastic jumps, and effeminate vocalization, Jo Koy reminds me right off the bat of Dane Cook and his style of comedy, but Koy is better at setting up the long jokes, laying seemingly irrelevant comedic landmines throughout his presentation only to detonate them at will later. Jo Koy: Don't Make Him Angry! is a fun performance, with Koy's wide-eyed goofiness immediately endearing to audiences. He's a nice fellow, this is immediately obvious, and you want to like him, and even when his material borders on the banal—like playing Wii Tennis with his mother—you find yourself enjoying it, because hey, you've got a silly mother, too.
Koy's performance covers a familiar gambit of stand up material: bad places he's had to perform gigs, disliking the French, Michael Phelps and the Olympics, road rage, playing video games with his mother, lots and lots of sex , and having a new baby son. This last one amounts to some pretty good material, as he's got his five-year-old son's mannerisms and quirky outbursts down pat. He had me laughing at least partially, but not consistently—some of the material is hit-or-miss. Koy struggles with timing, letting stories or lulls go on too long, but nothing too drastic. The problem with Jo Koy: Don't Make Him Angry! isn't that it's bad—it's finding reasons to recommend it over the slew of other standup comics out there.
All told, this is a fairly average performance, and Comedy Central releases a lot of them on DVD. There's not much in Jo Koy: Don't Make Him Angry! to make it shine above the rest, but neither is Koy particularly shabby or poor at his job of making people laugh. With a running time of 43 minutes, this is also a short presentation. The "Comedy Central Presents" supplemental adds 20 minutes of performance to the run time, if you fudge the math and include it for consideration, but like many of these Comedy Central DVDs, Jo Koy: Don't Make Him Angry! is pretty skimpy.
As with most Comedy Central DVD presentations, the technical specs are average. Koy performs on your ubiquitous stage, with stool and water bottle as props only; the lights illuminate the performance in a range of blues and purples, which are pleasantly saturated. Black levels are average, and details levels are acceptable, with an overall clean image. However, there are noticeable aliasing issues on this disc, with numerous screen door sequences and jagged edges present, definitely not up to high definition standards. Where we get a nice touch is a full 5.1 surround presentation, in addition to the standard stereo track. Koy alternates volume levels throughout the performance, but the mix is strong, and never lets him get too loud or too quiet. Audience levels are balanced nicely, and bass response is (as expected) poor.
In terms of extras, we get the aforementioned "Comedy Central Presents" performance, which is an additional performance recorded at least two years ago (as his son is only three in this one, not five, and his teeth are a lot fruglier). With a run time of 20 minutes, there's some good stuff in here; it's definitely as funny as the main performance. We also get some seemingly random content thrown in for good measure, including a performance by apl.de.ap from Black Eyed Peas rapping before the standup concert, interviews with b-boys Donnie "Crumbs" Counts and Moy Rivas (who were dancing in the background during the apl.de.ap song), and some footage of Jo's son. We also get some one-on-one recordings with Jo dancing and discussing various subjects.
When you boil it down, you can't go wrong with two things in comedy: parenthood, and dick and fart jokes. These days, why choose between them? Jo Koy: Don't Make Him Angry! covers the bases. A fun and friendly comic, Jo Koy had me laughing, but we'll see if his upcoming Comedy Central show will get him the mainstream attention.
Starring :
Jo Koy ... Himself
Muslimah Muhammad ... Karate Student
Director :
Troy Miller
Watch Full Movie
Or
Watch Full Movie
