Still Laugh-In: The Stars Celebrate Review

May 18, 2019 at 9:08pm
By Jason Stettner

Still Laugh-In: The Stars Celebrate is a Netflix Original film that acts as a comedy special tribute to a classic TV Show. This was for Rowan and Martin's Laugh-In, which was basically an uncensored comedic showcase that ran in the United States during the late 60’s to early 70’s. This tribute was created using some top tier comedic talent and it was ultimately squandered. To have that many excellent comedians and to just waste them, tragic.

There was an interesting mix here as you saw glimpses of the past mixed in with stuff from the now. For the most part the older content was far funnier than what was being shown now and that was neat. I liked the nostalgia element that I’m sure is great for older people. The crowd watching this presentation at the Dolby Theater was particularly old and I had no context as to what this was. It was neat to learn about the history and to see skits brought alive while being compared to their original versions.

That being said, the new stuff just wasn’t funny. It came across as awkward and it seemed like everyone involved didn’t know what they were doing. I felt particularly bad for Jameela Jamil as she seemed to just be awkwardly dancing, she’s quite funny when given the chance.

There was even a point in this where one of the comedians said that his line sucks, and it’s because he didn’t write it. I believe that was the after credits portion, whatever the case he was generally right. A lot of this wasn’t funny, not much of it was. I liked the whole throwback disco setup, but everything basically fell flat.

They tried to update many of the concepts for the modern age, I don’t know if comedy has changed a lot, but whatever was shown didn’t land. I was more interested in seeing this dip into showing classic actors. I didn’t know all of them, but some of them I was well aware of. It’s just weird to have so many big names, and then give them nothing to work with. You could clearly see how awkward some of them were.

I’d say that Rob Riggle probably had the best performance, or just generally the best showcase there. Other talent included Michael Douglas; Tiffany Haddish, Neil Patrick Harris, Tony Hale, John Lovitz and that’s just some of the names. The list goes on for quite awhile, and they’re mostly in small bits which doesn’t allow any of them to truly shine.

The Conclusion

Still Laugh-In: The Stars Celebrate was just pitiful in terms of comedy, as a nostalgia piece it was decent-ish. I wasn’t blown away by this and I wasn’t laughing at all. I was hoping it would be just a hilarious piece and it seemed like all of the actually comedic, as in funny people were those shown in the flashback pieces. It also looked more creative and inspired back then, they just felt painfully placed together here.

The stars I hoped would shine didn’t get much of an appearance and it feels like such a waste to get so many unique, varied individuals out here for this. It might have worked better as a mini series, or perhaps even scaled back to focus on certain individuals. No one really had a minute to shine. Pitiful attempt at trying to provide laughs, didn’t work.

Still Laugh-In: The Stars Celebrate Review at Home with Streamed Viewing
Content Access was Provided by Netflix

Rating Overall: 4.2