Okay Halforums, explain it to me.

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Tress

Tress

I was inspired by the "So bad it's good" movie thread. I have always been curious about something.

Why does everyone hate Dane Cook so much?

I'm not the guy's biggest fan or anything, but when I watched his HBO special I laughed. I thought some of his stuff was genuinely funny. Some of it was flat, so I just moved on. Then I heard about the guy's reputation. I don't understand the magnitude of vitriol directed at him all the time. If it was a simple matter of "I don't think he's funny, I prefer ____," I would understand. That's just simply a difference of opinions. Instead, I hear things like "I fucking hate that guy!" or "He's the worst comic of all time!" How is he that bad?

'splain it me, Halforums.
 
linglingface

linglingface

I find a lot of it is "I liked him before he got popular!" He is good to his fans and pretty funny. I certainly dont think he's the funniest man alive but I enjoy his stuff.
I think most people hate him because he got so popular, with people who don't know about other good comedians, better comics, so his shit gets quoted all the time and gets old.
 
Cajungal

Cajungal

Staff member
Personally, I noticed that most people seemed to turn on him after shows like Family Guy and Scrubs started making fun of him. So... bandwagon mentality?

I'll admit he usually annoys me (especially in his movies), but his Koolaid Guy bit is funny.
 
linglingface

linglingface

I like his jokes, but sometimes his stories get sooooo long before he gets to the punchline. It's fun to quote "shoes? Fuck shoes!" but if someone asks what that's from... be prepared to spend some time explaining the joke.
 
strawman

strawman

The first time I herd him was this bit on youtube:



It made me laugh. I poked around at his other material and while a lot of it was funny, nothing struck me as hilarious.

I don't know anything else about the guy, though, so I can't fathom why others would hate him with the passion of a thousand burning suns, but it's rather apparent that they do.

It's not like they are being forced to watch/listen to him 24/7.

 
Dave

Dave

Staff member
Dane Cook is not funny. That's why people hate him. He's not famous because he's a funny comedian, he's famous because he's a master at manipulating social media.
 
Jay

Jay

Dane Cook is not funny.

First off, his jokes are very easy. For example, Dane is describing how he makes out with a woman, something that he is sure to do after a show as the ladies think he’s such a piece of ass. In that joke, it’s essentially him going through the motions of kissing that any of us do, describing every inane detail and over-exaggerating it to the point of insipidness. Now, this is indeed, a matter of taste of humor but the key thing here is, it’s an easy joke to tell. Give any comedian the subject of kissing and the most common topic would invariably be a description of how that comedian kisses. It’s just easy. Unimaginative Joke-telling! Especially when he beats the dead horse with it for minutes on end.

Next is his supposed “edginess”. People think Dane Cook is edgy because he exhibits a high level of energy in his delivery. He jumps around, he kicks stools and he throws his mic. That doesn’t make you edgy. There’s nothing dangerous about that. More than anything, it just spells out the joke for the audience, relieving them of any effort expenditure thinking about the joke. George Carlin, Bill Hicks, Chris Rock… these are edgy… Dane Cook isn’t.

Lastly, he’s a joke thief. As in, the material he’s used on his albums was TAKEN FROM A BETTER AND LESSER KNOWN COMEDIAN. To me, this is unforgivable in comedy. Who you are and what you say up on that stage is your entire art and to steal from someone else is the lowest of the low. Several of Dane’s bits are retreads of Louis CK jokes that he’s done in the past. Also, if you’re laughing at YOUR jokes makes me seriously doubt you even came up with it.

That’s why I don’t like Dane Cook and his shitty romcom movies don’t help him at all neither.
 
Krisken

Krisken

Top 5 reasons to not like Dane Cook I think 5 and 4 are the biggest ones for me.

Also, he doesn't bring anything new to comedy. He doesn't tread new ground or bring any innovation to the field. Comedians who are/were a hundred times funnier and more inventive don't get the attention this guy gets, and I find that kinda sad.

I don't hate Dane Cook. I just think the attention he got was undeserved.
 
Espy

Espy

I don't hate him, I just think he's a typical douchebag bro. Whom I would generally avoid anyway so...
 
sixpackshaker

sixpackshaker

I've never seen anything that funny from him. I don't get his fame, or why chicks think he is a great piece of ass.

I dated a girl that asked my opinion of his looks. I said he looks OK, but he does not seem to be anyone that would catch peoples attention on looks alone. Then she went into super fan mode, and said I was totally jealous of his talent and fame.

:eek:
 
J

Joe Johnson

Some of his bits are funny, but a lot are misses. I don't hate him, but I'd certainly rather watch, say, Lewis Black, or Jim Gaffigan - who can make me howl with laughter, rather than just light chuckling.
 
checkeredhat

checkeredhat

I think that its an oversaturation thing. He went pretty quickly from being a somewhat unknown stand up comic to being EVERYWHERE in a relatively short time frame, and churned out some pretty awful movies to boot.

That, and his routine got kind of stale.
Its how I see Russel Peters as well. Don't know how well known he is in the States, but here Russel Peters is pretty huge. I used to love his stuff, but after a while, you saw him everywhere, and he was always performing the same jokes, or slight variations of the same jokes. Comedy's a tricky business, you need to maintain that style and that delivery cause that's what people want to see, but you have to vary it up a bit or people grow tired of it really fast.

Also there's the numerous accusations of lifting work from other comedians. Which is just not cool.
 
Tress

Tress

I gotcha now. Thanks especially to Jay and Krisken for explaining it so thoroughly. Before this all I would ever see is:

"I hate that guy!"
"Why?"
"I just do. He's the worst ever!"
"What makes him the worst ever?"
"He just is."
Added at: 11:20
 
SpecialKO

SpecialKO

I never liked Dane Cook's jokes, but what actually annoyed me about him was just how "media machine" he was. He basically came out of nowhere, and all of a sudden Comedy Central is hyping him as the funniest comic ever, and building all these websites and social media platforms, and getting him all these cameo roles, and comedy specials, and then you watch him, and he sucks....

He's like a manufactured MTV act, only Comedy Central pushed it even further and saturated all the their content with him because they were desperate for a headlining act that wasn't an offshoot of the Daily Show.

I didn't know about the joke-stealing thing, which actually makes me not like him, on a personal level.
 
Frank

Frank

He didn't really come out of nowhere. He had been working as a comic for many years before he got famous.
 
Covar

Covar

I've never found him funny. That is all. The lack of punchline explained in the list Krisken linked to is probably the reason. The man just rambles, and not even in a clever way like Seinfeld.
 
Tress

Tress

Covar said:
I've never found him funny. That is all. The lack of punchline explained in the list Krisken linked to is probably the reason. The man just rambles, and not even in a clever way like Seinfeld.
Click to expand...
See, I have the opposite reaction. Seinfeld was never funny to me. At all. He just stands on stage and rambles/whines with a nasal voice. I don't see the appeal... but that's just me. It goes to show how subjective humor can be.
 
checkeredhat

checkeredhat

Frankie Williamson said:
He didn't really come out of nowhere. He had been working as a comic for many years before he got famous.
Click to expand...
I should rephrase for clarity. I didn't mean that came out of nowhere, but that once he was "Discovered", his career accelerated very quickly. I'm not talking about so much the 0-60, but more like the 60-100. getting to 60 took him a while.
Added at: 22:12
Jay said:
You shut your mouth! Russell Peters is awesome.
Click to expand...
Oh I'm not saying he's not funny. Just repetitive. I'd like to see more from him. I've seen him do what seems like 20 different versions of the exact same act on various comedy shows and hosting gigs on Comedy Network (Never seen him live though, admittedly). Since I first saw him on Just For Laughs, YEARS ago, I think I've heard three or four new jokes from his newer DVD specials. My sister used to work at Yuk Yuks in Toronto and she said she never once saw him perform a different act either.
 
checkeredhat

checkeredhat

Fair enough. You've had a slew of very different experiences with him than I have. I will keep my mind more open the next time a friend suggests watching one of his DVD specials.
Only Stand Up I've seen live in person was Gerry Dee, who definitely did not disappoint. Glen Foster was there in the audience, and it was cool to get to meet him and shake his hand after. I wasn't sure if he was still working stand up.
 
Jay

Jay

It's only normal when comics establish themselves that they will reuse their best material especially if they get lucky enough to get their act on Comedy Central. They want to leave an impression to the average person.

Going to their shows once they are headlining is an ideal time for them to work on new material, new jokes, new sequence of jokes. Something up and comers can't really do as they are trying to establish their name. That's why when you buy their stuff, watch them on TV you'll get to see the same type of material. Peter want that. People want to go, look "Russell Peters!" they don't want his other stuff, they want to hear him do his chinese/indian bit.

And let me tell you that the last Russell Peter's show he was talking about all the different culture types of Asians and Arabs. My ribs hurt a few hours after the show as it was hilarious stuff. 90% of it was new stuff.
 
linglingface

linglingface

Did anyone see his show where he had 3 other comedians touring with him? One of the guys ended up going home for a few days and basically said, "Hey, it's great what you're trying to do for us, but I already have a pretty good career going for myself." The other comedians basically got like 10 minutes each to do their act before Dane Cook came out and did his show. One guy was brand new and not at all funny, but nice to see him trying out his new joke (a "kill 'em with kindness" story...) and try to build that up.

Anyway, I will say I appreciated his humor a bit more before he got sooooo popular, before it was the "cool" thing to like him. When he was not as well known, he'd pop on yahoo chat from time-to-time and cam chat with people. He actually told my friend that she looked like a "sexy librarian". :p
 
Tress

Tress

The weird thing is that I missed the period where he was the super-cool new hotness of comedy. I saw his special, thought he was funny, then heard nothing but RRRAAAGGGGEEE!!!!! (Which, I must say, seems much more justified now that I read these plagiarism accusations)

For me he went from unknown to despised. I missed that part in the middle.
 
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