Review of Russell Peters: Outsourced

Introduction

Russell Peters: Outsourced, geddit? It`s a nod to the service industry phenomenon of the 21st Century. Russell Peters is a Canadian comic of Indian extraction, and right now, all our service industries are upping sticks and moving call centres to the Indian subcontinent. The title of the DVD is halfway witty when you come to think about it. Unfortunately, that`s about as witty as this DVD gets.

Captured in January 2006, this performance from Russell Peters is another slice of that observational comedy thing that is so in vogue these days. It`s 75 minutes of pointing out the absurdities of everyday life, albeit with an ethnic flavour, and played to a diverse audience. Expose that funny bone as it`s about to be tickled.

Video

This disc is a direct port of the Region 1 version, and coded for regions 2 to 5. That means an NTSC transfer. If you are watching this on a 30 year old, wooden cased TV, with knobs and dials instead of a remote control, then you may have reason for concern. For the technological majority, the picture is clear and free of any problems.

Audio

You have a choice of DD 5.1 and DD 2.0 soundtracks, the difference being you can either be amongst the audience or behind them. The dialogue is clear throughout, which is the important thing, and subtitles are provided in Hindi, Mandarin and Cantonese.

Features

All you get with this disc is an audio commentary from Russell and his brother/manager Clayton. The sound balance isn`t quite right, and on occasion their comments are muffled by the on stage antics. It`s all pretty dull and pointless, with a comedian commenting on his performance doing little to liven things up.

Incidentally, the font on the menus is atrocious.

Conclusion

Russell Peters is the Paul Daniels of observational comedy. In other words, I liked it, but not a lot. It didn`t help that the show was recorded in San Francisco. I don`t like American comedy audiences. They go to comedy shows for validation, to howl, to scream, to woof approvingly. But they hardly ever laugh. The modern comic is akin to a rock star, and fans follow them religiously on their tours. Their routines become memorised, and it`s no longer comedy, but a pop song. Fans wait for their favourite bits, and will be rolling around in hysterics long before said comic gets close to the punchline. Watching a comedy DVD is a vicarious communal experience, you rely on the reactions of the audience to indicate the rhythm and inform your own response. Watching a comic with an American audience is for me like watching M*A*S*H with a laugh track, just wrong. If they are going to release comic performances on DVD in the UK, they should at least be recorded in front of a UK audience.

Rant over, it`s time to dissect and analyse Russell Peters. We`ll begin with the spleen and colon. He is funny, and I laughed. But it is a juvenile sense of humour that plays to the lowest common denominator. Peters` thing is to take an ethnic group, find a stereotype, and proceed to mock it. It maybe accents, or it maybe physical characteristics, but it`s never really that insightful or witty. He gets away with it, because he is ethnic, and self-deprecating into the bargain. It`s fine to point out that Chinese people have epicanthic folds over their eyes, as long as he comments on the distinct noses and hirsute nature of the average Indian.

It`s schoolyard humour, and because the class clown delivers it you laugh. Afterwards, when you think about it some more, the humour drains away to reveal just how pitiful these observations are. One whole sequence is set around the shock that ensues when it is revealed that an innocuous Mandarin word sounds like a racial slur in English. Oh my God, different languages sound different, what a stunner, someone stop the presses. Comedy based on racial stereotypes is a touchy thing, and a couple of times the jokes fall flat. It isn`t very smart either, and much as I loathe the term political correctness, I doubt that any white comic could get away with telling most of these jokes.

The trouble is that the audience is diverse, which means to appeal to them all together, the comedy has to be broad and deal with commonalities. Almost everyone knows about a person`s colour, accent and broad stereotypes, but cultural nuances would be lost on certain portions of the audience. That means appealing to the lowest common denominator.

Russell Peters is blessed with funny bones. He engages the audience, and makes you laugh. It`s damned fortunate because his material verges on the puerile, lacks sophistication and will hardly go down in the annals of great comedy performances. Outsourced is the sort of show that you watch once for a chuckle, but you wouldn`t want to see it twice, and you`ll be steamed if you see this disc in a Christmas stocking. Incidentally, if you are thinking of getting this for grandma, be aware that he is one of those sweary comedians.