Discuss Amy Schumer: The Leather Special
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Umm... no.
posted by Kay_RockSTAFFMOD on March 10, 2017 at 12:32 PM
I fell in love with Amy Schumer when she appeared on Last Comic Standing. I loved her boldness, her raunchiness, and her willingness to be self deprecating. I've always enjoyed her specials and her various appearances. I even loved Trainwreck.
I've noticed that the "embarrassing awkwardness" aspect in her material is increasing and taking over everything else. It's particularly noticeable in things like her Old Navy Commercials, but I figured she doesn't write those and can't be held responsible.
This special is non-stop awkwardness. The audience starts out laughing, but it gets a little quieter with each joke. 10 minutes in, it's a small scattering of those folks who basically laugh at everything and anything. I sat there watching on Netflix, just wincing. It is not her best work.
She's always said that her sister is her voice of reason for her. She pays her as an assistant or manager or whatever to keep her "real." My guess is she got big enough in her own head to think she no longer needs to listen to her. The raunchiness that used to be wonderfully shocking and endearing and brilliantly delivered has crossed over into... just embarrassing.
I hope this is an anomaly and she goes back to the sharp, biting, brilliant material she used to do.
Reply by theburbs
on March 17, 2017 at 12:26 PM
The worst part is, the negative ratings for her special are already being attributed to the "alt-right" or "misogyny" or some other boogeyman, as if it's impossible for anyone to come out and admit that this special is just awful.
I feel like all I ever hear is "woman comedians aren't respected!!!" and then one of the biggest female comics in the world right now has an opportunity to show off her stuff, and the best she can come up with is "my vagina smells like a barnyard animal".
Reply by Phasmophobia
on March 17, 2017 at 7:38 PM
@Kay_Rock I've also been a fan of Amy since she appeared on Last Comic Standing. I enjoy her TV show a lot. I thought Trainwreck was pretty solid. I loved her "Mostly Sex Stuff" special and thought "Live from the Apollo" had its moments, but her newest special? I barely laughed. I felt like it didn't start to get funny until she was talking about meeting Bradley Cooper, and then the special ended. She spent way too much time on her vulgar material and should've mixed it up more.
Reply by theburbs
on March 18, 2017 at 12:34 AM
Yikes, her Instagram post about the negative reviews is embarrassing. Her special isn't as well-received as her previous efforts. I think she needs to accept it.
Reply by tmdb65271336
on March 18, 2017 at 4:37 AM
I haven't seen the special, nor have I seen any of Ms. Schumer's work, but the excuses sound an awful lot like what happened with the Ghostbusters remake. The PR people seem to have found a bogeyman, in this case the "Alt-right" while for Ghostbusters it was "misogynist trolls" like Milo Yannopoulis, to use as an excuse for the low performance of their special/movie. I'm sure there's an element of that in both, since there are clear examples of abysmal behavior from individuals in those groups, but it seems to me too convenient to blame all of the problems on what really are a small group of angry or hateful people.
I'm older, so I'm probably somewhat old-fashioned in my view, but I strongly believe that the rise of social media has created an excessive degree of oversensitivity. I've read too many stories from national news outlets regarding social media reactions to controversies like the above where all the story consists of is a paragraph describing the controversy and then a sampling of Twitter or Facebook posts illustrating the negative views. Any time a popular, hostile new hashtag appears, news outlets seem primed to cover it immediately. Then Hollywood, the government, or whatever public group is on the receiving end of it stumbles all over themselves to respond. But nobody ever seems to ask, "Wait, are we overreacting?" "Does this REALLY represent a popular sentiment?" "What's really going on here?"
Cynical people like me believe, though, that these groups know that they've done something crappy, or turned out an inferior product, and are just casting about for some socially unpopular group or individual to blame it on.
I think Ms. Schumer should, as you folks say, take a hard look at her act and determine if something has changed in her appeal. If she really did put in her best effort, she has nothing to apologize for. But if she cranked out a lazy Netflix special because Netflix offered her a bucketload of money and they weren't terribly particular about the quality, then perhaps she deserves the criticism.
Reply by theburbs
on March 18, 2017 at 9:24 AM
Another common defence of her special is "If a MAN was talking about sex and vulgar stuff, everyone would think it was hilarious!"
I don't believe this is true. I've yawned my way through sets by male comics who don't have much to offer beyond lame material about their sex lives. Ali Wong's Netflix special included raunchy jokes about sex, and she was hilarious. She doesn't rely solely on raunchy jokes either, which I feel makes them even more effective. Amy's sex/grossout jokes had a numbing effect after a while. (Ali Wong's special is called Baby Cobra and I highly recommend it.)
Funny is funny, and lazy is lazy. I don't care if you're male or female. I've seen enough comedy shows to know when someone is phoning it in. Amy wrote a bunch of jokes about how bad her vagina smells and diarrhea and is shocked that people are calling her special lazy and unfunny. I keep finding new reasons to dislike her.