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DVD Review: Brian Regan: The Epitome of Hyperbole

I was surprised to see a commercial for the broadcast premier of the Comedy Central special, Brian Regan: The Epitome of Hyperbole, considering this special was just released on DVD. Is that a new marketing strategy? Showing the special on TV so people will be hyped to get the DVD? It actually might not be such a bad idea, so long as the program is awesome. I mean, I would have absolutely bought the DVD of Iron Man after seeing it in theaters, were it made available. Unfortunately, Brian Regan: The Epitome of Hyperbole is not awesome. It's not bad, but it just didn't seem like anything special, and certainly not worth getting the DVD considering when it was shown on television at the same time. The few extras on the disc don't justify spending any kind of money.

Since I had the DVD in my possession at the time, that's the version I saw. I didn't bother checking out the televised version for comparison as the one on the DVD was 42 minutes long, which is the same length as a televised hour-long special after removing all the commercials, so you really don't get any extra footage except for the little encore bits at the end, which are like a grand total of five minutes long, if that. There's also a behind-the-scenes featurette about what Brian and the crew has to go through to actually make the show happen. Not very interesting stuff here. It's not like a movie where you have special effects or anything, it's just people setting up the background sets, camera guys rehearsing where they'll be moving, Brian picking out what clothes he'll be wearing... not something that really needs to be seen.

Okay, so the actual special was decent enough. He fits a good amount of material in, some of which made laugh. Unlike some other comedians, Brian does a lot of clean comedy, meaning no profanities or adult subject matter. He does bits about people who read, a plot to kidnap Russell Crow, saying stupid things, art, ballet, and on and on, which is good as if you're not connecting with one of the subjects he'll be onto another one is a few moments. Like, I thought his bit about learning Spanish was quite good, 'cause it really hit home. None of the bits really fall flat, they all work in some way or another, but they didn't all make me laugh.

Also, I should note that this guy is really hyper. He seems to love striding back and forth across the stage, as well as using a lot of high-volume voices. Sometimes it's justified, but sometimes it just feels out of place, like he's trying to hard. Sometimes I just want to tell him "chill, dude, you already got the gig, relax a bit". I haven't seen any other performances from this guy so I can't really compare with his previous performances, but this one was enjoyable enough to watch, I just wouldn't spend money on it, especially being so short. Check it out on television, or do a Netflix rental.

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