Richard Jeni: A Big Steaming Pile Of Me (EOTWS)

End Of The Week Shorts #46 extract: Richard Jeni: A Big Steaming Pule Of Me (2005)

A few degrees above lukewarm. 

A Big Steaming Pile of Me has a few ingenious jokes within (I really liked the loan shark bit), and there are many laughs to be had. However, whilst there are touches of brilliant comedy within, much of this - especially the first half - is quite drab and unimaginative. The four or five hilarious bits in the back end unfortunately do not manage to completely reverse this. Beyond the jokes themselves, I found Jeni's stage persona to be, again, lukewarm. For the first 40 minutes, I enjoyed this more when I wasn't looking at the screen as he projects a seemingly contrived energy and carries himself in a way that you can very clearly see is calculated, and in quite a hackneyed and trite way. Having said that, I'm walking away thinking of the best jokes and having had an all right time.