Vince Vaughn's Wild West Comedy Show: 30 Days & 30 Nights - Hollywood to the Heartland

Vince Vaughn's Wild West Comedy Show: 30 Days & 30 Nights - Hollywood to the Heartland
Actor Vince Vaughn proves a generous and expansive host in Vince Vaughn's Wild West Comedy Show: 30 Days & 30 Nights - Hollywood to the Heartland. Organizing a monthlong bus tour of concert halls in 30 American cities, Vaughn packs his bags and lives aboard the four-wheeler with a quartet of relatively unknown comedians. Hitting a different town every day, the group simply does everything it can do to entertain people while Vaughn supplements all the comic monologues with sketches performed alongside some of his famous showbiz friends. The guest comics--Ahmed Ahmed, Bret Ernst, John Caparulo, and Sebastian Maniscalco--vary in concentration and quality, but you can see them growing as performers all the time. This full-length documentary spends a lot of time with each of them, even getting to know their parents and their hopes and dreams. Meanwhile, Vaughn is just having fun with the likes of old buddy Jon Favreau, up-and-coming star Justin Long (the young Mac dude in those commercials for Apple), and longtime friend Peter Billingsley (the child who got hit in the eye in A Christmas Story), executive producer of this film. Billingsley gamely recreates a scene he and Vaughn played together as teens in an after-school television special about steroid use--a definite highlight for Wild West Comedy Show. The film drags a bit during the biographical material, but there are many interesting and even upbeat moments, such as the tour group turning up in the wake of Katrina’s devastation in New Orleans and helping to keep spirits up. --Tom Keogh
Customer Review: The scenes are cut short and incoherent. There are very few funny scenes.
It's not a comedy show. The worst thing is the front and back cover do not clearly say it's a documentary. It's a bad documentary because The scenes are cut short and incoherent. There are a few touching moments when they showed the personal problems of the comedians.
Customer Review: Terrific concept doesn't measure up - comics just ain't funny enough
Talk about an outstanding premise! Vince Vaughn, one of the most reliably-funny comic actors of his time, gives you a back-stage pass as he leads a bunch of young, talented comics on a thirty-shows-in-thirty-days romp across the country. Vaughn clearly knows funny, and the homage to Buffalo Bill's old wild west shows promises an instant classic. Unfortunately, that promise remains largely undelivered, for the sad fact is that the four comics Vaughn showcases are, well, not all that funny. You can see the equivalent in virtually any college town on a Friday night, and that isn't good enough to carry this film. The sad thing is that these four guys all see themselves as great comics. One of them even complains that, given his credentials, he should be headlining big concerts "like the guys in the '80s." If he's comparing himself to the comic rock stars of that era - Steve Martin, Richard Pryor, Billy Crystal, Robin Williams, Steven Wright, or (God help him) Eddie Murphy, the guy is living in a world all his own. The stand-up comic giants of the '80s sold out stadiums because they were so funny you were imitating their routines weeks later. There's nothing on this DVD that rises to the level of comic gold. Unless, that is, you're a Vince Vaughn fan. This guy somehow balances his comic genius with an ordinary-guy sensibility so that you never begrudge him his vast success. It's clear that Vaughn appreciates where he is and never forgets his humble beginnings. So it's a great treat to see him working with old friends, like Jon Favreau and Peter Billingsly. One of the most charming moments in the film comes when Vaughn and Billingsly reprise a scene from an after-school special they made about steroid abuse in their younger days - it's a scene both funny and touching. So for every scene where Vaughn reels us in, whether it's talking about the legacy of Buck Owens or riffing with Dwight Yoakam, there are several scenes of young comics just not being all that funny. And so it is that this movie rides into the sunset with a mediocre review. So sad. At least it looks like the guys had a lot of fun making it.