It might just be that I'm not his intended audience, I'm not sure, but I've enjoyed other Latino comedians in the past (just check out my most recent review of Gabriel Iglesias' latest act), and just found most of Lopez's jokes this time around to not be on par with his previous efforts. I don't know if it was the fact that a good third of his show was in Spanish, or that I just didn't identify enough with his "growing up a poor Latino" angle. Either way, the audience seemed to enjoy his performance a lot more than I did.
Lopez starts the night off with talks of the first Latina in the Supreme Court, Cash for Clunkers and even a bit about the swine flu, and then rolls into racial comparisons between Mexicans and Caucasians. At first, the comparisons are about foods like tortillas verses flatbread or burritos verses wraps, but then he goes into restaurant names like On the Border verses Cracker Barrel.
While he spends most of his time playing the race card, he also talks about the differences between when he grew up and kids today (no matter the race). He touches on everything from the names of kids these days, to discipline and handling fears. While a good bit of his show was only mildly amusing to me, I found this part of the event to be the best. The rest of the night talks about everything from sayings that don't translate well to the absurdity of shooting bean-bag guns at Mexicans and finally into a bit about immigration which, in my opinion, made the entire show feel more like a political campaign than a comedy show. I really felt like he was going to announce some sort of run for office by the end of the show, and the entire event was to get up on his soapbox and rally people to vote for him.
I've reviewed quite a few stand-up DVDs over the past few years, and while a bulk of them have come from Comedy Central, the few that have been HBO specials have always felt a cut above the rest. From the perspective of a middle-class white guy who learned French in high school and forgot whatever Spanish I learned in college, I found George Lopez: Tall, Dark and Chicano to be one of the worst HBO specials yet and, quite frankly, not all that highly rated in general. I've liked some of Lopez's other acts and I know he does good stuff, but this particular set just doesn't seem all that great to me. Unless you are a major fan of his, and fit nicely into his target audience, then I would suggest passing up George Lopez's latest show. As for those people he is obviously gearing his comedy towards (which was apparently enough to sell out the show in San Antonio), then I'm sure Tall, Dark and Chicano is right up your alley, but even then I would say the DVD is a rental at best since there are no special features to lure you into a purchase and no real reason to re-watch the show.
