Comic actor Vince Vaughn loads up an RV with four stand-up comics from Los Angeles’ Comedy Store for a chuckle-headed road trip. None of the talent could sustain a full-length concert film of their own but there are sufficient laughs pulled from some 600 hours of video. The tour began in California and ended at The Vic Theatre in Chicago, with gigs in fourteen states in between for a “regional” outreach to the comedy-deprived. Director Ari Sandel proved more inventive in his short “West Bank Story” (2005), an impudent musical about competing falafel stands on the West Bank. Egyptian-American Ahmed Ahmed supplies some of the best bits, including one about “white girls” who date him just to “piss off their parents” because he looks like a terrorist. “I wish I did political jokes,” goes John Caparulo. “But I don’t know shit.” The film dwells little on local tastes, although one comic booed in San Diego gripes: “I can make fun of God but not fuckin’ flip flops?” Behind-the-scenes details are marginal: one comic says he has “to shit seven times before a show.” The most documentary moment comes when the filmmakers do an audio replay that proves a patron hollered a friendly “fuck ya!” which a comic had heard as an unfriendly “fuck you.” With impresario Vince Vaughn, Bret Ernst, Jon Favreau, Justin Long, Keir O’Donnell and Arlington Heights native Sebastian Maniscalco. 110m. (Bill Stamets)
Mr. Smith Goes To Market: Class Comedy In Dumb Money “Dumb Money,” based on the book “The Antisocial Network” by Ben Mezrich, is a torn-from-yesterday’s-headlines, foul-mouthed comedy about a range of people participating in the "rocket to the moon" of the stock bubble of GameStop, the mall videogame store.
Seeing The Elephant: A Review Of Babylon The boisterous, brawling yet melancholy "Babylon," is a variation on film history, but more drawing for drama. It's gaudy and mean, celebratory and sorrowful.
