Caliendo unofficially belongs to a small group of stand-up comedians who know how to utilize impressions.  It seems to me that many comedians think impressions are inherently funny for no better reason than it’s a famous person’s voice coming from another individual.  Caliendo realizes that impressions need content to make them funny.  Caliendo trusts his audience to recognize a voice not only as a voice but also as an actual being.  He brings an actual person to life on stage with his spot-on impressions, and lets the audience fill in the rest with their imaginations.  He often puts more than one impression in the same scene thus giving the illusion of having several people on stage.  His stand-up comedy album and DVD were both released in September of this year and both entitled Frank Caliendo: All Over the Place.  I heard the album and will be reviewing the stand-up routine as it is presented in a non-visual medium.

Frank Caliendo once again pulls us into his celebrity impression repertoire.  He stands us at the brink of hilarity and shows us a cycling parade of familiar voices.  All voices are recognizable and impressively detailed.  Unfortunately the most prominent voices in his act are the impressions he’s been using for years:  George W. Bush, Bill Clinton, Al Pacino and John Madden.  John Madden is a fairly unique impersonation and therefore always seems fresh and welcome.  (The Madden impression could get tiresome if used too much, but Caliendo is enough of a seasoned pro that his instincts prevent it.)  The Clinton and Bush impressions on the other hand don’t offer much more than your average Clinton and Bush jokes.  Bush is dumb, and Clinton is horny.  That being said, even though Caliendo’s Clinton and Bush impressions aren’t used boldly, he does use them cleverly.  He knows when to use them to spice up a subject, and how to turn a phrase using their personalities.  I was by no means dissatisfied with the use of Clinton and Bush.  But making fun of their character flaws is like laughing at a person you see fall down every day—eventually you’d rather not see it, and probably help them up.  Even in the face of the media’s constant barrage of Clinton and Bush jokes, Caliendo’s jokes of the same content were still funny, and rightfully deserved laughter.  He does give us some knew voices to enjoy like Charles Barkley, Jeff Goldbloom, and Mickey Rooney.

The structure of the show is best described by the title.  Caliendo knew what he was doing when he created a routine that was “all over the place” which further leads me to believe that when comedians gain enough popularity they feel at liberty to say whatever they want even if it displays a lack of clarity or a sensible segue.  To segue, he primarily uses his voices to jump from one topic to the next or he makes a small joke about having not segued.  He mostly relies on his voices to misunderstand something he’s talking about then jump ship onto the outside subject matter of the voice’s random joke.  It’s all funny, but Caliendo could have made a more cohesive piece with a little more work.  One of my pet peeves with stand-up comedy albums is the use of visual humor.  It’s because of this that Stand-up is best received visually.  Caliendo doesn’t do it much, but the first two tracks of the disc involve two particular physical mannerisms that Bush typically shows.  The album listeners, of course, can’t see them and are left at a loss.  I’m sure they’re hilarious in person, but in an album they don’t make much sense.

The Verdict:  It’s funny, but it’s probably better on DVD.

-Vince

It was a nice little vampire flick, but it wasn’t much of a sequel.  The only thing that strongly ties it to the first one is Edgar Frog (Corey Feldman).  If it wasn’t for Frog, The Lost Boys: The Tribe would have been its own separate movie.  It was a good attempt and a worthwhile effort, but Lost Boys caliber it isn’t.

The plot holds very few surprises.  Former surfer Chris Emerson (Tad Hilgenbrink) and his sister, Nicole Emerson (Autumn Reeser), move to the costal vampire infested town of Luna Bay, California, and end up bumping elbows with some patrons of the undead.  Even though there’s no new ground being broken here, the characters are fun to watch. Chris Emerson is somewhat unstable and overprotective of his younger starved-for-excitement sister.  As for the vampires, how often to you get to see undead surfers?  Not very often.  Other than the surfing element adding a little spice to the characters there’s no noticeable charisma from any of the vampires.  The most interesting vampire dies in the first five minutes of the film.  However, I must say that vampire is played by horror icon Tom Savini, and therefore holding a candle in the quake of that wind is pretty difficult.  The most interesting character is Edgar Frog who hunts vampires and shapes surf boards.

I was under the impression that Edgar Frog grew from the comic nerd that he was in the first movie to a professional hunter of the denizens of the dark.  I thought Feldmen was going to be “Edgar Frog: Butt-Kicker Extraordinaire.”  But Frog’s part came up lacking.  If you’re looking to see an uncanny display of bad-assery you won’t find it here.  Feldman is only in the movie every so often to help Chris Emerson combat his vampire problem.  As the viewer (particularly if you’ve seen the first movie) you spend the first part of the movie eagerly awaiting the arrival of the most interesting character only to be let down by an actor trying way too hard to be tough.  When we first get the chance to discover the new Frog, we see him trying to communicate through an unconvincing growl and half sneer.  I understand it’s intended to be comedic, spoofing traditional hunter stereotypes, but it’s more irritating than it is funny.  Had Feldman played Frog more organically as a comic nerd grown to be a vampire hunter, and minimized the tough guy act to a few initial lines as a means of quickly establishing dominance it would have been more satisfying.  The Frog character does soften as the movie progresses and thus the movie becomes for fun, but it’s to little too late.

It’s filled with funny situations and snappy one-liners that are easily quotable.  Humor and horror are successfully juggled to create a feel similar to its predecessor’s.  There’s a blend of dark humor and youthful pranks.  In a few scenes we get to see how far vampires can take a joke, such as slitting another vampire’s stomach to let his intestines spill out.  I think if most people were immortal this prank would gain popularity quickly.

The most interesting part of the film is the surprise cameo by Corey Haim during the credits appearing as Sam Emerson from the first Lost Boys film.  In my opinion, the second movie should have been about the events of Haim’s cameo, but maybe we’ll get a third movie to better show these events.

The Verdict:  It’s funny, it’s charming, it’s scary, and it’s worth a rent.  You might want to buy it for collecting purposes if you’re a fan of the first Lost Boys movie.  Watch it with some friends, and have a laugh.  It’s a pretty good time.