Parts if it are funny, but so much if it is… I don’t know… I can’t put my finger on it. Is it me?
Crude? It was crude? 
I liked some parts … but before long, it felt as though the comedians were just trying to outgross each other.
I turned it off after 30 minutes or so.
I’m not liking it either. From Betty White going hardcore, to the constant “OMG Sulu is GAY”, the whole thing seems just…mean spirited.
Well, I think the “jokes” that are just flat out rude and vulgar just fall short – most of them are just not that funny.
The ones that really really work are the more subtle ones. Betty White was great – she’s zinging people in that sweet little voice. And her bits were more subtle, for the most part – she was genuinely funny. (I thought she was the best one).
The Pam Anderson roast pretty much ruined me for any of the other roasts.
I was uncomfortable watching Andy Dick because he seemed deranged, but other than that, no. That’s what roasts are always like, although this one wasn’t the funniest. There wasn’t a lot of creativity, and if anything, it wasn’t mean-spirited enough. The crowd seemed to be playing the sensitive card, and I had to wonder what the hell they were expecting. (Jeffrey Ross read my mind with his joke about that.) This one was pretty soft compared to the jokes about Courtney Love at the Pamela Anderson roast.
I’ve seen other roasts, and they didn’t bother me like this one did. Andy Dick creeped me out.
I think a lot of the rude/vulgar remarks were more WTF than funny. Like the one that ended with telling Farrah to close her legs… it wasn’t funny and it was so out of nowhere…?
Roasts always make me feel uncomfortable. I am pretty sure they are supposed to be the lowest form of humor - as crude, rude, filthy and insulting as possible. It was at a roast where Gilbert Gottfried saved himself from a 9/11 joke that fell flat (it was within a month of the attacks, I believe) by doing perhaps the first publicly-documented telling of The Aristocrats.
So, those who agree to be roasted should know what they are getting into. Still, I find the type of humor usually too mean-spirited for my taste. I rarely watch them.
To add on – so much of comedy has to do with delivery and timing, anyways. So when it’s one of the comics up there just saying flat out something like, “Yeah, and Andy Dick was sucking Sulu’s cock!” or some crude thing like that – it just wasn’t funny. Lame delivery, no setup, no real “joke”.
Lisa Lampanelli (towards the end), who I’ve heard is really funny doing roasts, was pretty hit or miss, as far as I was concerned. It was too obvious for the first half of her bit that she was reading it (didn’t look natural at all), and the first half of her jokes were all the crude non-jokes, like the type I cited above.
The best bits were more subtle, with good delivery.
Like Arte Lang observing that Jason Alexander went from doing a show about nothing to doing actually… nothing.
Like Betty White saying to Shatner, “You look great… you know, they make 1% milk now.”
Sandra Bullock’s recorded clip was pretty good, too.
Oh, and let me just say… Farrah Fawcett looked scary to me. :eek:
Even if you like roasts, there was plenty of material with creep-out potential. Andy Dick was the big problem, but the constant Star Trek slash jokes (that’s what they amounted to) were off-putting in their own way. I did like these roasts better when the Friar’s Club did them - one plus was that they had a huge parade of old celebrities who could be made fun of. Things were more spread around.
Most of the time, this stuff is in fun. Every time they made a joke at Takei’s expense, he seemed to laugh his ass off.
It’s not just the constant gay jokes. Calling Nichelle Nichols “Mammy”? WTF was that?
Yeah, this one did seem to have some uncomfortable moments, even for a roast.
George Takei’s closing comment to Shatner, “Fuck you and the horse you rode in on,” felt like he really meant it. I know it was a joke about Shatner’s entrance, but the look in Takei’s eyes and the tone in his voice gave the line a bit too much of an edge. I know there’s a history of bad feelings there, but supposedly it’s behind them, so I don’t know.
(Heck, there were probably more jokes tonight at Takei’s expense than at Shatner’s.)
Farrah wasn’t funny or entertaining, even in a trainwreck kind of way.
Shatner’s ‘fried chicken’ joke involving Nichelle Nichols struck me as an off moment, although I’ll admit I laughed at the joke about the asian guy driving the starship. Maybe I have a double-standard there.
A few laugh-out loud moments, but a lot of dull spots, too.
I think Shatner was the best performer at his own roast. I’m not sure if that is bad or good. I think he was fairly funny. George Takei was pretty good too.
For a roast, they sure didn’t burn him very well. Most of the jokes were about Andy Dick or Takei. WTF? I really hate how Comedy Central took the roasts away from the Friars club. Those guys were REALLY funny.
Watching it now. I agree that the vulgarity is merely vulgar. The parts that are good are more specific to Shatner and his career, and are accurately acerbic but also affectionate.
Right – they spent more time making jokes about their fellow roasters, then would finish with one joke or maybe two directed at Shatner. They needed to focus on him more.
Is there a presumption that earlier roasts, or Friar’s Club roasts, are on a more elevated, on-point order? No. This was par for the course. Roasts really aren’t for everyone.
“I am the illegitimate butt-baby of Kirk and Spock… Kock.” Now that’s nice.
The “he gave Sulu a blow-job” joke was funny the first 15 times or so. Then it got old, then rudiculous. You’d think that people that tell jokes for a living could come up with something a little more varied instead of hitting the same thing over and over. I don’t mind vulgarity, but you have to use it a little more sparingly (or atleast vary it up a little) or it stops being shocking and just gets kinda awkward.
The funniest parts were when they just showed clips of Shatners past gigs (especially the singing). Really no joke is going to make his rendition of “Tamborine Man” more rudiculous.
Maybe it’s because I never heard of most of the “roasters” before, but I thought the quality of the material was very uneven. And yeah, the gay jokes got old real fast.
I wish they’d done more Shatner jokes and fewer jokes about the other nobodies on the stage. I can’t believe Farrah and Takei were the only ones to needle him about his hair, and Farrah was so out of it that I suspect a lot of people didn’t get the joke.