Dave Chappelle: The Dreamer

When Chapelle strips away the comedy for a while, he puts out some great nuggets of philosophy. The entire ‘dream’ section at the end was a cool perspective and pretty inspiring. But just so many of the punchlines are ‘trans people amiright?’ and it gets tiring at a certain point. Which is annoying cos the structure to his joke writing is top shelf. Feels like he’s trying to squeeze all the juice out of a really bitter lemon.

The weakest link in his specials.

A lot has happened to Chappelle (and the people around him) in recent years, so he has plenty of material to divulge on, and he makes it pay off with cracking punchlines. He's even getting better at the less funny musings that he usually turns to in the end. Fun fact: I saw Chappelle perform a bunch of this material when he performed to 3000 people in Perth last year, and a fight broke out during the show.

Some expected wisdom from Dave, but just mediocre material.

Easily Chappelle's weakest special. Too few of his jokes come full circle like they have in the past, and while I understand his commitment to freedom of expression, it honestly just feels needlessly petty the way he continues to focus on the trans community. Credit to delivering another powerful message about perseverance and following ones dream both through earnest insight and comedy, but the cohesion between the jokes was a bit off and overall it just felt less impactful than past specials.

If nothing else, I do appreciate Chappelle's pragmatic, down-the-line delivery of his stand-up, undercut by some wonderful moments of glee as he throws out a piece of shit-stirring; he seems to be somewhat repeating himself here, but as always he takes a clear-eyed, level-headed view of current societal trends and punctures them with barbs ranging from the deliberately obvious to cleverly witty. Nothing earth-shakingly profound here, but his ultimately good-natured spirit wins through.

Been watching some stand up before falling asleep. Some funny bits but a lot of like talking about his famous friends and some throwing shit to clapping seals trans stuff and then like the last segment is a fucking Ted talk. I dunno man I will say like the conceit of this one could be interesting and is definitely played out like a finale of some sort of thing even if it’s not.

Chapelle is prolific in the amount and quality of Netflix specials he puts out but the caliber of jokes slip a bit here for the first time. It all feels done before in The Dreamer. Maybe take a couple years off and recharge, Dave! We will eagerly wait for your next piece.

The funny bits can be counted on one hand, and it begs the simple question: "what the fuck is he doing?". He comes off more as a brand than anything else, from the cringe-inducing slo-mo opening credits, as if it's a trailer for a biographical tearjeker about a saviour figure, through all the self-indulgent material, down to the stage set and the way he presents himself. He used to have comedic chops, but with writing that is almost completely throwaway and unfunny, only the claims are left.

In his last few specials, Chappelle has spent too much time fighting his anti-PC battle. And I wouldn't mind if there was a lot of comedy still to mine there, but there really isn't much left. The other parts of his set are still very good, even if it never reaches the heights of his earlier work.