Analysis Of Hannibal Buress

Hannibal Buress shows us why he has gotten to where he is in the stand up comedy world with his material in his latest special Comedy Camisado (2015), but fails to do anything else to showcase his talents. First of all I just want it known that I am a big Hannibal Buress fan, from The Eric Andre Show to his previous special Live From Chicago. So with this in mind, I went into this special with very high expectations. While those expectations were met, they were certainly not exceeded. As a student majoring in comedy and aspiring to be stand up comedian, I wanted this special to fill me with passion and remind me of how beautifully special stand up comedy can be. While I was able to have a lot of laughs and a few times to pause and think, this

Hannibal’s jokes in this special are extremely funny. The first bit Hannibal does is reveal the glasses he’s wearing are fake because he got Lasik surgery, prompting him to throw his glasses into the audience and then doing so again with a second pair of glasses he has stashed in his pocket. This is perhaps Hannibal’s best bit of the show because it’s unexpected and plays on the audience’s expectations. It also leads to him to a funny rant about the benefits of having good eyesight. Ranting is what Hannibal does best in this special. He somehow turns a situation where somebody was watching Wipeout on a plane into not caring about his fly being down, he tells a story where he complains about about how terrible at acting babies are and finally explains how one joke he told caused the downfall of Bill Cosby. What makes these so funny is the laid back delivery that Hannibal uses, which catches us off guard at times and makes it seem like he’s not doing material, he’s just streaming his thoughts to

There are a one or two instances where Hannibal interacts with the audience and we see beyond the stage, but other than that it’s easy to forget that he’s performing in a big theatre with lots of space to create comedy and engage with your audience. Hannibal uses a traditional and simplistic way of performing stand up that can be successful if used to isolate a performer and feel very raw like in Louis C.K.’s “Chewed Up”, which excludes showing the audience and focuses solely on the performer. Yet in Comedy Camisado, Hannibal doesn’t feel isolated and more importantly, there isn’t a raw engaging feeling this special which makes it seem flat. Hannibal also misses the opportunity to utilize the space on stage and take advantage of the fact that he’s performing in a theatre, something that Bo Burnham does so well in his special “what.”. Hannibal just paces around the stage the whole special, confining himself artistically. What we are left with in this special is a performance of comedy that would have the same effect if done on a sound stage or in a comedy club, demonstrating the lack of thought that went into making the