Lenny Bruce went to jail for taking street language onstage and giving it a context. Richard Pryor went to jail for drugs – and giving vulgarity music. George Carlin took a more philosophical approach but still got arrested. By the time that David Milch’s Deadwood gave vulgarity a Shakespearean poetry, the days of jail time for vulgarity were long past. Which is too bad.
Aziz Ansari does a lovely job with other people’s material [see: The Hangover and Parks and Recreation] but when it comes to his stand-up act, captured on Intimate Moments for a Sensual Evening [a title clearly meant to be ironic], his major contribution is volume.
Of the fifty-five minute main concert and the thirty-plus moments of re-creating some of his older material at the Upright Citizens Brigade Theater, only a brief bit as RAAAAAAAANDY [eight As – he insists] – on attending an R. Kelly concert, is even remotely funny. Even the audience seems mostly baffled by Ansari’s material for the most part. [When the audience scatters applause instead laughter, that’s not the best of signs.]
His delivery on his older material is oddly tentative and that doesn’t help much, either, making the bonus material something less than a bonus.
All in all, Ansari should stay with his acting career – or let someone else write his stand-up material.
Grade: D