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C-
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Iliza Shlesinger: A Different Animal
(2025)
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Tara Ariano
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If Shlesinger’s vision accurately represents what millennials think feminism is, I think I get why Gen Z is so mad at them.
Posted Apr 18, 2025
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C
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The Parenting
(2025)
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Tara Ariano
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The Parenting fizzles as horror and as comedy. And if you’re still considering watching just for the Brian Cox nude scene? Don’t bother. It’s probably a stunt butt.
Posted Apr 18, 2025
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C-
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Chelsea Handler: The Feeling
(2025)
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Tara Ariano
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That’s the thing about a Chelsea Handler special: When you fire it up, you can’t say you don’t know what you’re going to get.
Posted Apr 18, 2025
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B
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Ilana Glazer: Human Magic
(2024)
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Tara Ariano
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The most astonishing trick in Ilana Glazer's new special, Human Magic — considering that it opens with a joke about sleep deprivation causing them cognitive decline — is how much parenthood has coincided with a notable sharpening of their comic focus.
Posted Feb 20, 2025
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B
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You're Cordially Invited
(2025)
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Tara Ariano
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Look, I also saw the alligator. I get that you think I’m crazy. But try to overcome your entirely justified prejudice and you will probably have a good time.
Posted Feb 20, 2025
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B
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Liza Treyger: Night Owl
(2025)
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Tara Ariano
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In Night Owl, Treyger has written not just what she knows but, through a lot of it, what we all know, resulting in a remarkably assured début.
Posted Feb 20, 2025
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B
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Kinda Pregnant
(2025)
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Tara Ariano
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Kinda Pregnant is as focused on the reality as I should have expected a movie by two mothers, at least one of whom has definitely been pregnant, would be.
Posted Feb 20, 2025
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A-
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Bridget Jones: Mad About the Boy
(2025)
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Tara Ariano
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While the original Bridget Jones’s Diary is untouchable among both romcom AND Christmas movies, Bridget Jones: Mad About The Boy seems to have been made by people who know that, and know what you loved about it.
Posted Feb 20, 2025
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B+
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Seth Meyers: Dad Man Walking
(2024)
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Tara Ariano
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The special helps define Meyers’ stage persona as a likable family man with an edge.
Posted Dec 19, 2024
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B+
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James Acaster: Hecklers Welcome
(2024)
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Tara Ariano
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If James Acaster’s new special, Hecklers Welcome, is anything to go by, maybe a comedy audience is only as obnoxious as the comic they’re seeing, even when said comic explicitly gives them license to pop off.
Posted Dec 19, 2024
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B
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Fortune Feimster: Crushing It
(2024)
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Tara Ariano
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Her craft and skill are so finely honed that you might mainly remember her having a good time all the time, and only notice long after her set is over how much it actually affected you.
Posted Dec 19, 2024
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Jacqueline Novak: Get on Your Knees
(2024)
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Tara Ariano
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It diminishes Get on Your Knees to compare it to any of Netflix’s worst specials starring male comics. But good comedy on the platform only makes the bad comedy look worse.
Posted Aug 28, 2024
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Jenny Slate: Seasoned Professional
(2024)
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Tara Ariano
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Slate’s particular gift, as displayed here, is to wring goofiness from even the most emotionally fraught moments.
Posted Aug 28, 2024
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Fern Brady: Autistic Bikini Queen
(2024)
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Tara Ariano
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Brady is hilariously frank making herself the butt of jokes, while also pointing out the absurdity of the social conventions she knows she’s supposed to observe in order to be, as she frequently puts it, “normal.”
Posted Aug 28, 2024
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Unfrosted
(2024)
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Tara Ariano
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Maybe The Lonely Island or Lord and Miller or Rogen and Goldberg would have struck the right tone of absurdity to make this story pop. But probably no one could have, because it’s too high-fructose corny an idea to work under any circumstances.
Posted Aug 28, 2024
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Nikki Glaser: Someday You'll Die
(2024)
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Tara Ariano
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For now, at least, Glaser seems very committed to childlessness, and has a lot of excellent reasons for it. Cynicism has never seemed more fun. Or sensible!
Posted Aug 28, 2024
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Hannah Einbinder: Everything Must Go
(2024)
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Tara Ariano
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Everything Must Go can be off-putting. We don’t understand why these aesthetic choices were made, and though her stories are candid, her affectations keep her from seeming particularly vulnerable in telling them.
Posted Aug 28, 2024
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Jackpot!
(2024)
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Tara Ariano
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The way the characters’ periodic moments of attempted emotional resonance stop the action dead made a lot more sense once I found out that screenwriter Rob Yescombe has spent most of his career writing video games.
Posted Aug 28, 2024
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