Carlos Mencia: Performance Enhanced DVD review

Posted by Michael O on 11.04.2008

Bigger, Stronger, Mexican-er!

I should probably just go ahead and say that I'm not exactly a fan of Carlos Mencia. I've caught his show on many occasions and while I've had a laugh here and there, I find him to be a poor man's Dave Chappelle, or perhaps in the spirit of Mencia, a day laborer's Dave Chapelle. For the sake of a fair and objective review of Performance Enhanced, a stand up special recorded earlier this year in Florida, I decided to set aside my preconceptions and open myself up to laughing and learning. I didn't do a ton of either, but I wasn't looking for a window to jump out of.

He started off his sixty five minute act, which mostly vacillated between racial and sexual politics, with a bit on the prospects of a black president and the impact it could have on the future of racism in this country. As with his show, some of the jokes and observations were funny enough, but assertions that the race card will no longer exist once Barack takes office is, at best, a bit of a stretch. Mencia also has a tendency to play the "YEAH, I said it, what are YOU going to do about it?" card a little too much, which grates on the nerves given that he is far from the only comedian around who "goes there". Nothing kills a joke for me faster than to see the teller pat himself on the back for it.

At one point Carlos mentioned that white people approach him all the time and say "you can't say that". I have a hard time believing that, as comics have been mining the racial divide for quite some time and while we live in a politically correct society, expectations of what a comic can and can't say have really changed since they locked up Lenny Bruce. He went on to say that as a "beaner", he can say whatever he wants. Since "Carlos" (his real name is Ned) is actually of Honduran and German descent, he should maybe amend that statement to "I'm not a beaner, I just play one on TV". As if to wink at those aware of Mencia's heritage, he had a bit about waking up in Germany, during a layover on his way to Iraq, and being freaked out by the sight of a man who looked just like his father.

Some of his material is just too obvious: Black people talk funny and gay people are good at designing clothes...ha ha. Other times it's less predictable, though too often his tangents veer far of course and never quite come back to form a cohesive unit. At one point he tries to make a case for Michael Vick being a victim of an unjust legal system for going to jail and tries to compare dog fighting to slavery, or something (I completely lost his point in the absurdity of that statement). I think he was trying to address differences of culture, and the relativity of ethical animal treatment, worthy subject matter in my opinion, but to the best of my knowledge Vick is an American and dog fighting has been illegal for a long time. He may get swallowed by his own stream of consciousness sometimes, but he did manage to turn it around into a discussion about the way we treat the animals we eat and eventually made a pretty funny (though not nearly funny enough to justify the length of the walk there) case for how vegetarians are actually responsible for global warming.

Many of his rants on the differences between the sexes were funny enough, but he didn't have too much that say that I haven't heard elsewhere, and better. Hey, did you know men can't think straight when they have boners or that women sometimes use their sexuality to get what they want? You do now! As the credits came up though, I realized time had gone by relatively fast and I wasn't angry, a surefire sign that I hadn't just sat through an excruciatingly awful hour of stand-up comedy. Carlos isn't re-inventing the wheel, but he's not ruining it either and if you enjoy the comedy stylings of Mr. Mencia, this seems like as good a place as any to get your fix.


As for the technical and supplemental? The video was your standard full screen job, nothing fancy, and the audio was perfectly functional.

The bonus features came in at about 20 minutes and consisted of the following:

-Mencia's appearance on MTV's Cribs (I don't watch Cribs and I don't really like Mencia, so why would I watch this? I wouldn't and I didn't)

-Additional "Dean Carlos" footage from his show

-A selection of clips from popular Comedy Central programs (At least I was able to get some yuks re-watching a Colbert bit about Cookie Monster)

-DVD previews (bonus feature or advertisements you wouldn't want to sit through: you decide!

The 411: Obviously the performance was just not enhanced enough for this guy but I'm sure fans who missed this stand-up performance when it was on TV (or who've been waiting for a longer, un-cut version of it) will be happy with the DVD. If, like me, you're not a fan and you've made up your mind about Mencia, there's nothing here that will change it.

Final Score:  6.0   [ Average ]