John Mulaney's Sack Lunch Bunch

Cafe Society
1

John Mulaney is my favorite comedian, now that Louis CK is hot garbage (please, Mulaney, please don’t be hot garbage). I love his standup.

His latest Netflix show is something different: an homage to eighties children’s TV like 321 Contact and Electric Company and Mr. Rogers, a song-and-dance variety show with shades of Maurice Sendak, a lot of super-insider New York/entertainment jokes, and existential dread.

I’ve never seen anything like it. It’s bizarre, it’s completely unclear who the audience is supposed to be (I think anyone under about 8 would burst into tears), it’s genius.

2

I liked it. I think it’s pretty clear that the intended audience are adults and more specifically existing John Mulaney fans. I also think he is doing a sort of Ha Ha only serious at the beginning, when the kids ask if this is intended to be sincere or ironic. (His answer is: that depends on the reception.)

It’s a “I’m famous enough now that I can do something fairly experimental, and if you don’t like it, that is your problem” kind of deal.

3

Netflix does label it a family & children’s movie though, so maybe I just don’t understand what kids might find entertaining:

4

I love John Mulaney too! I can’t wait to check this out.

5

Andre de Shields! Just saw him in Hadestown last week.

This is hysterical.

6

I loved it. My only issue was there weren’t enough non-musical scenes. I wanted more more. I also feel like the buttered noodles song went on a little too long, and the “Night Flowers” song felt out of place. It didn’t really have a joke to it.

7

Just watched about 20 minutes of it with my ten-year-old. She didn’t crack a smile once, but she was transfixed.

8

I think the joke of “Do Flowers Exist at Night?” is that the question is asked but isn’t explored any more deeply than that. Normally, a song like that would make the case for one side or the other. This song just asks the question over and over. The questioner admits that he hasn’t put the merest effort into answering the question. All he would have to do is check at night but he can’t even be arsed to do that.

9

I enjoyed it quite a bit. The song about his grandpa Paul was relatable to a lot of people I’m sure.

10

I read an interview with Mulaney where he said that song was among the most autobiographical of the show. To this day, he said, he has trouble imagining what a flower would look like at nighttime; and as a kid, he genuinely wondered whether they were even there, and kept forgetting to go check.

Paul wasn’t the grandpa, he was grandma’s boyfriend! It was a super-sweet song.

11

I must be the only Mulaney fan that didn’t like it! Waaaaay too much singing. I was disappointed.