Comedy Central Roast of William Shatner DVD Review
Posted by Leonard Hayhurst on 03.20.2007
Boldly go where all roasts have already gone
I never thought Comedy Central’s celebrity roasts worked, because all the swearing and most salacious material had to be edited for basic cable. At least the DVD is uncensored. It also adds in about twenty minutes of extra footage, but it seems it was cut more for time than content. Visual and audio presentation is identical to the television airing. A roast is hard to review, so we will recap and review as we go.
Jason Alexander opens the show as the host. He introduces a career retrospective that also looks at Shatner’s role in pop culture. No clips from Free Enterprise though. Shatner rides out on a white horse to “Ride, Captain, Ride” and takes his seat in the actual captain’s chair from “Star Trek.” Alexander does a brief bio, being sure to highlight that Shatner is Canadian and Jewish. Making him doubly evil. Alexander introduces some of the stars and rightly points out that most of the roasters have never even met Shatner before. Which is another problem I have with these roasts. If you look at the old Dean Martin roasts, they usually had people connected to the honoree in some manner.
To prove my point of random comedians that are just there because they need the work Greg Giraldo starts us off. He disses on everybody, but Shatner This is another problem of mine as some people will talk about everybody else except the honoree. Did you get the memo on why you are there? Even when he finally delivers a few lines on Shatner they relate back to the other people on the dais, such as him “overacting more than Betty White’s bladder.”
Speaking of White, she goes next to a great ovation. The humor here is listening to White talk dirty. White simply saying, “cock ring” is a huge howl. However, she also displays veteran timing and wit.
Jeff Ross sounds like he had his material written by the same guy that did Giraldo’s. He cracks a line on Bea Arthur who isn’t even in the damn building. He mixes it up a bit, doing a few lines on Bill and then a few lines on some of the others. He does get in some good fat jokes on Shatner, “do you work at Boston Legal or Boston Market.”
Sandra Bullock appears via video. She asks them to take it easy on him, because he’s old and feeble minded. I love the Shatner shirt she wears.
I give Artie Lange a pass for cracking gay jokes on George Takei, because they work together on “The Howard Stern Show.” I think there are more jokes done about Takei and Andy Dick being gay than on Shatner overall. When he does get around to dissing Shatner, he’s masterful with lines like Shatner through “’Star Trek’ is “more responsible for people not getting laid than impotence” and “Bill was on ‘TJ Hooker” and I once banged a hooker named TJ.”
Fred Willard gets a quick bit. Nichelle Nichols mentions their interracial kiss and then tells Shatner to kiss her black ass.
Ben Stiller in a taped video reads a letter that Shatner wrote him when he was ten in reply to his request for an autograph. Great bit.
Farrah Fawcett predictably stutters and trips over her lines. The bit they have written for her is pretty good too. She says she can’t roast Bill, so Alexander helps her warm up by talking about what happened backstage before the show. She does give my favorite line of the night on Bill, “we’re both known for our hair, our boobs and we both fucked Lee Majors.” She introduces a montage of Shatner’s singing performances, which reeks of kitschy awesome. Nothing is funnier than the video of Shatner singing “Rocket Man.” A close second is him doing “Mr. Tambourine Man.”
Andy Dick dresses like Spock and pretends to be the love child of Spock and Kirk, Kock. It’s not very funny, but I give him credit for doing something creative.
In a great bit, Clint Howard reprises his role of Balok from an old “Star Trek” episode. He calls Shatner’s toupee a “wookie snatch.”
Kevin Pollack dusts off one of his old standup bits on Shatner, but you can’t deny he does the best Shatner impression in the business. He talks about how Shatner asked him to tell him how he does his impression for his book Get a Life.
I find Patton Oswalt overrated, but he’s very funny here. He makes fun of himself for being a huge sci-fi nerd. He mentions a video where Andy Dick licks a roller skate and then gets licked by Dick. He also licks Fawcett and Carrie Fisher in the audience, who licks him back. Oswalt produces a brown paper bag and asks Shatner to act his way out of it.
George Takei plays on his own gayness for humor. He has one of the best all time voices. He’s the best roaster of the night. He attacks Shatner with zeal and gets some fresh, creative lines on the other roasters. Matters breakdown when Andy Dick tries to lick Nichols and then Ross kisses Takei.
Lisa Lampanelli closes the show. She’s Don Rickles without the wit and timing. She does the same jokes she always does, just plugs in different names, except for her usual litany of material on Andy Dick being gay. She reads all her material directly from a script. I did like the line on Shatner’s sci-fi novels being so compelling that “Tom Cruise is making them into a religion.”
Jimmy Kimmel and Sarah Silverman do a taped video where they are stuck in an airport because they got their tickets off of Price Line.
Shatner finally gets to speak and basically tells everyone to fuck off. He gets great lines in on everyone, obviously written for him though. “Why is everyone who is inspired by me a fat fucking loser?”
BONUS FOOTAGE
Jessie Klein hosts the red carpet arrivals. The red carpet looks about two feet long.
Some of the roasters are talked to briefly and actually come off funnier than they do onstage, because they’re not rehearsed responses. Oswalt does a brilliant bit on Mel Gibson’s dad working in references to the Holocaust. When Klein does the post show exits she seems loaded.
They show behind the scenes footage of people getting set for the roast and practicing their routines. They show more red carpet arrivals on this featurette than the one above.
A making of the roast featurette is actually more interesting than I would have thought. Shatner meets with the producers of the show and has the roast laid out for him. There are some mentions of Nimoy being there, but it’s never explained why he doesn’t show. I seem to remember a taped bit with Nimoy from the original broadcast, but it’s not on here.
The 411: All Comedy Central roasts follow the same basic template and feature the same C-grade comedians. Shatner makes a good roastee and both video packages on him are great. But if you’ve seen one Comedy Central roast, you’ve seen them all. Fans of Shatner should get a kick out of this though. There are some good lines and bits here and there. There also seems to be more love and respect for Shatner than for other past roastees like Chevy Chase and Pamela Anderson, which does add a nice level to proceeding above the usual potty mouth spewing.
