Filmed live at Las Vegas' Caesar's Palace in November 2005, this HBO comedy special finds the acerbic, arcane-pop-culture-referencing former Monday Night Football pundit Dennis Miller looking and sounding a little long in the comic tooth. No longer the cocky, self-assured verbal wizard of Mr. Miller Goes to Washington (1988) or Dennis Miller: Black & White (1990) fame, Dennis Miller: All In finds the erstwhile funnyman sounding a lot like he did in his last HBO special, 2003's The Raw Feed (VL-11/03). Working in a couple of decent if halfhearted rim shots during the first half (on tank tops: “if you're built like a tank, don't wear the top”; on aging flight attendants: “you have to peel back the bark and count the rings”), Miller switches to his new millennium alter ego—Republican reactionary—for the second half, which is sometimes mildly funny (on drilling in Alaska: “let's suck it drier than Noel Coward's memoirs”), but mostly willfully ignorant on topics ranging from the inconvenient truth of global warming to the Bush administration's less-than-glowing report card circa late 2005. Miller takes especial delight in pointless liberal bashing—targets include Al Sharpton, Howard Dean, and Senator Harry Reid—but he's silent on the subjects of GOP buffoonery and corruption, post-Katrina bungling, etc. Of course, the litmus test here is not Miller's politics, but rather the effectiveness of his comedy, and neither I nor the tough Vegas audience (scattershot applause) felt that he ‘showed us the funny.' An optional purchase, at best. Aud: P. (R. Pitman)
Dennis Miller: All In
(2005) 58 min. DVD: $19.98. HBO Video (avail. from most distributors). Color cover. Closed captioned. ISBN: 0-7831-4233-1. Volume 21, Issue 5
Dennis Miller: All In
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