Dane Cook: Isolated Incident DVD Review

Posted by Joseph Lee on 11.19.2009

Dane Cook is back with a brand new stand-up DVD. Does he deserve the recent backlash?



For the longest time it seems like the world has been against Dane Cook. There are three types of people in regards to the man and his stand-up comedy routine. There are the people who love the man through thick and thin and will always support him. There are those who can't stand him and hate everything he is associated with. Then there are those like me. I liked Dane's comedy on both Harmful if Swallowed and Retaliation. However I think when he got really big is right around the point when I didn't like him anymore. It's not because of the rumors of him stealing jokes or the fact he may have a big ego. I don't care about that. Richard Pryor was an avid drug user and Eddie Murphy once picked up a transvestite prostitute. Personal lives don't mean anything to me as long as they can make me laugh.

Which, during Dane's height of popularity, was something he wasn't doing. I didn't laugh during Vicious Circle, and only listened to part of Rough Around the Edges before I turned it off. Let's not even begin with his movies and how unfunny they are. The point is it seemed to me like Dane had sacrificed his comedy for money and popularity, something that many comedians have done before him. So where does his latest offering of Isolated Incident fare, as he tries to go back to his roots and make a small crowd at the Laugh Factory entertained for an hour?

I will say this: Dane Cook still plays that same spastic, annoying character he's always played. If you never found him funny then you're not going to like it this time around either. But in this special, outside of some familiar vulgarities he seems more mature and grounded with his comedy. He discusses the deaths of his parents and how they loved how he had become famous, and then he makes some good-natured jokes about them. He talks about the backlash against his popularity and a particularly disturbing email he received from a detractor telling him his parents died to get away from his bad comedy (which, as he revealed in an interview, was legitimate).

There are also a few tweaks to his style that I noticed which actually work. He doesn't make nearly as many pop culture references. Although there are a few, because that is his style, he tones it down a little in order to make more observational humor about life and not a Family Guy-lite comedy act. Simply put, he's not as annoying this time around and his observations had me nodding occasionally and laughing others. For the first time in years, Dane Cook is actually kind of funny. I think his life experiences have calmed him down, grounded him, and made him focus more on being funny than actually being "wink-wink" clever and attempting to make himself look better for the sake of jokes.

That's not to say this special doesn't have flaws, because it does. His character that he plays is still very annoying, he still says different words just to be different and acts like he usually does. All complaints I've always had about his style, although a little toned down, are still present. The worst part of this comedy act is the vulgarity. Cook's always been a little vulgar in his act but in this case it is really over-the-top. Abortion, rape, random porn, masturbation, scatological humor and more are talked about. I'm all for this style if it's funny, but here it isn't. It's just gross, and clearly there for shock value and shock value alone.

So while his style is more refined than it used to be, he abandons his pop culture references for the gross-out. The gross-out just isn't funny and it hurts the special as a result. But in this special you can see Dane trying new things and attempting to tweak his act right in front of a new audience, seeing what works and what doesn't. He's becoming a more mature performer and while this one isn't anything special, it's a step in the right direction and I have a feeling that his next one could be his best.

Film: 6.5

The special was filmed on a low-quality camera to give a more intimate setting. It looks like it was just taped on a handheld and as a result the lighting is dark and it's somewhat grainy. Video isn't very important for a comedy special but it could have been recorded better and made more professional. It's presented in widescreen.

Video: 5.5

The sound is just fine. I had no problems hearing Dane's act and that's the important part. With the way it was shot I feared the audio would be bad as well but luckily that wasn't the case. They knew what was most important and the audio was good. The special is presented in English but no other specifications.

Audio: 7.0

Normally Comedy Central features a lot of material on it's standup releases, but I think that because Dane has had so many that it was a little tapped out in this case. As a result, there isn't a lot to enjoy on this disc.

30 Premeditated Acts: This features some deleted jokes (which were deleted for a reason) and some extended versions of other jokes. These were taken from the other two days that Dane was at the Laugh Factory in that same weekend, which were recorded but not used. He sits with a friend and explains why he uses some of the jokes he uses. Some of them show different reactions to his more lewd jokes as well as the evolution of others. It's interesting to see him grow-up with some of the jokes through the video clips presented. It's another hour of material, but since you've heard some of it before I'd say half of it is new.

Isolated Interview: This is a twenty minute interview with Dane about his career and the making of this special. Dane provides a lot of insight into the stories behind the jokes and the attempts to film a comedy special in one uncut shot in an intimate setting within the space of one weekend. Anything could go wrong and it turns out that the one on the DVD is the third attempt, as the other two had disastrous results.

Special Features: 6.0

The 411: Dane Cook: Isolated Incident is a special in which you can witness the maturation of Dane Cook as a performer. He still uses quite a few jokes and routines that do not work but his act is expanding to more observational humor and less pop culture references and that is a step in the right direction. The DVD was poorly handled and the special features are interesting but very few. Overall it's an average DVD and special, which is a lot more than I was expecting given Dane's recent track record.

Final Score:  6.0   [ Average ]