If you like obvious, one sided humor, this one's for you
935593
since i first registered to vote in the 70s i've been an independent, but i find coulter's writing (if you can call it that) thin, obvious and as blatantly biased as the people she claims to be defending us from.  i know this seems TERRIBLY corny to all you liberal haters, but two wrongs DON'T make a right, so constructing an allegedly intellectual discussion by slinging low blows and one liners at the opposition just makes Coulter look like what she is - the Paris Hilton of the conservative set, someone who's famous merely for being famous.  if you think this book - or any of her poorly thought out writings - constitutes a serious political discussion, you're dumber than Coulter (who's laughing all the way to the bank and wouldn't be caught DEAD having lunch at the local diner with the likes of pickup truck NASCAR republicans).
2585609
I picked this up for free, thinking it might be a laugh. It wasn't even good for that. Clearly the author is sincere about her bs. If you're searching for backward generalizations about women, and a bit of dumbed down common sense with a grammatically painful delivery, look no further.
3388099
In general, this is a pretty funny book. It's formatted with a "party game" feel with some questions asking you to insert the name of someone the group finds either detestable or desirable, but it's also an easy solo read. It's small and light-weight and the material is pretty on the page. The issue I have is with the content. Some of the scenarios are creative; others are downright raunchy. The ones that are creative and/or raunchy are hilarious. The problem is that you have to sift through 20 mildly funny, PG-13 scenarios before you get to these truly interesting ones. My husband and I found ourselves shrugging at a good portion of them saying "Well, I guess that's kind of funny" or "Oh, I get it" (insert bland expression here.)

Overall impression? Too much money for so few laughs.
218050
If you like his show, you'll love the book.  If not, then perhaps not.  That's pretty much all you need to know.

To the reviewer who gave it one star and started his review with:

>Jon Stewart may be a funny man, a real comedian but don't view him (or his funny staff) as a professor or educator of American History and American politics. I know this book was meant to be a parody, unfortunately these days a lot of young Americans who enjoys Jon Stewart don't study American history and politics well enough to know the difference between the actual American history and the funny stuff Mr. Stewart put in the book.

This is a ridiculous request.  What, as long as there is still one person in the world who is not intimately familiar with American history, no one should write any parodies about it until they learn?  Shheez, that takes "lowest coommon denominator" reasoning to it's most ridiculous extreme?

Also I might add -- hasn't this "stoned slacker" stereotype (Daily Show viewers not being very well informed, as Bill O'Reilly asserted) already been convincingly debunked?  Comedy Central did a survey which showed that the average Daily Show viewer is MORE educated and BETTER informed than the typical "O'Reilly Factor" viewer.  So if we follow your reasoning, isn't the greater danger that people who watch Fox News will have problems differentiating reality & O'reilly's "no-spin spin?"  If I look at a review of an O'Reilly book, am I going to find you expressing your concern (and your one-star opinion) there too?

To all reviewers: Look, if you don't agree with the political slant of the book, that's fine.  But that is NOT a basis for giving it one star!  The rating should be assigned to reflect how well the book achieves it's stated objective: to be a well written parody of American history as told from Jon Stewart/Daily Show's well-know and well-understood POV.  To rate it on some other, personal political agenda basis, is just childish.  Cut it out, OK?
1034537
This came out during my college days. Do not expect Richard Pryor type social commentary or warm funny Bill Cosby tales about childhood here. Murphy, then barely out of his teens, is basically taking a scattergun approach to make people laugh about things he sees. Leave your brains at the door and laugh. Interestingly, an Ebony magazine article once quoted Murphy as dismissing "Boogie in Your Butt" (where the title of this review comes from) as "garbage." True, but it's FUNNY garbage, as is the "Enough is Enough" parody (is that Joe Piscopo with him?).
4157051
A satire? Supposedly yes, but in "Satric comedies" you'll at least get 4 big laughs. Here you don't get even one, and that's a big curse to a lot of this-past-year hit comedies I saw (except "Chicken Run").
It starts with a jinx-happy average joe (Ben Stiller) named Greg Fawker who wants to marry a school teacher (Jay Roach). Before she does, though, she has to make sure it's alright with her parents. It passes with her mom, but her dad (Robert De Niro), a paranoid ex-CIA agent, gets a little...too paranoid.
Sounds like funny comedy, right? No, the trailers/TV commercials have truly deceived you there, it's the direct oppisite.
OK, it's starts off alright, but the middle turns it more serious and even cornier jokes I had to plow through infest this waste of great actors.
I'm starting to sound obnioxious, right? I'm sorry about that, but I just can't stand unfunny comedies. And neither do you. So we are anti-unfunny-humor pals, right? Then trust me on this one.
To the jokes:
Flat, and preditible. There's even one that rips-off a joke similar to that from "Dumb and Dumber": something valueble is knocked over by a cork and what comes in return are disasterous results. In "Dumb and Dumber", a guy accidentley knocks over and kills a snowy owl with a cork, in here ("Meet the Parents", though why do I have to add this part?) Greg knocks over De Niro's mother's ashes with a cork (but what's also pretty predictible and just put in to put some originality to the punchline) the family cat urinates on the ashes.
The acting is plain old grosteque and wooden, even worst than the horrible writing and flat jokes combined ("You can't say bomb on an airplane!" "Bomb, bomb, bomb!").
If you wanna laugh at 2000 comedy material, stick to the trailers of this film (which are strikingly more funny than the film itself), "Chicken Run", or (the unintentionally amusing sci-fi/action/thriller) "Battlefield Earth".
PS: And if you think nothing can flaw it more, it's also boring as well.
1287746
as some reviewers have already pointed out, this was unintentionally funny.
1189319
The great comedians, Bob Hope, Jack Benny etc. refered to crude humor as "the easy laugh". So much easier to drop an f bomb or a crude remark to get a startled laugh than to be genuinely funny. The author thinks hes hilarious because hes crude. Shocking, maybe but not funny.
2484524
I'd call this mildly amusing. Chock full of the kind of stuff that would be much better told in-person where the nuances and attempts at humor would be easier to understand. As a written piece it comes off more smug and snarky than tongue-in-cheek. A good editor might have helped too. The forward by Greg LeMond is the best  part and things go downhill (but not in a fast, fun, twisty way) from there. Perhaps the best place for this book is in your "reading room" where snippets can be read while taking care of other business? Otherwise, borrow it from your friend.
2602050
kinda funny, but also very hackneyed, really - little original, some that is vexing and irritating.

Bee's TV persona, that of a close-minded far Left demagogue for whom the world is neatly divided into Evil White non-Leftist Males and Good Everyone Else - is not dominant here, to her credit, but the sort of mindset that Bee projects while she is bloviating about her limited understanding of political issues and nuance...is reflected here.

It's okay to have a strong opinion, but if you're ignorant and trying to mock the 'other' side... sometimes it's neither funny nor illuminating.  But ifd you agree politically - you aren't going to care.  No way is this a 4 or 5 star comedy book... but it may be if you too are a far Left Democrat and statist.  And sure, this might work were some one on the right as relatively unoriginal and politicized..  but it would still be more the politics of someone in a cognitive bubble with a penchant for acting superior...

This is the vulgar, predictable, sometimes sorta funny effort of a hackey, Leftist comic.  If you're a Leftist and think everyone who isn't is mean and stupid - this may be for you.
4929003
As The Humor Code notes several times, humor can't stand to be examined. It falls apart and fails, like magic does when you explain a trick. That said, the authors fly off around the world, looking at comedy and humor and what makes them tick in different societies. From their Denver base, they get to visit with New York admen, Palestinian sketch satirists, Japanese standup students, and eventually take all they have learned and demonstrate it at the Just for Laughs festival.

Suffice it to say comedy gets to keep its secrets. There is no universal formula. Different jokes appeal to different folks. Different societies take offense at different things. American standup filth doesn't play as well in say, Yemen.

Many societies have moron jokes, poking insults at some minority or other country: Irish jokes in England, Okie jokes in the USA, Newfie jokes in Canada, Polish jokes in North America (in the sixties). That's about as universal as The Humor Code gets.

There is so much they miss, it is criminal. They visited Tanzania to learn about laughing disease, but never mention the infectiousness of laughter. That the top selling record in the USA was once just laughter. People listened and couldn't help laughing. They miss the printed word entirely: the setups of Robert Benchley, the knife twisting of Celia Rivenbark, the Dementia Praecox of SJ Perelman. And most strangely, they don't examine delivery and timing - how one person can make reading the telephone book funny and two people telling the same joke get entirely different reactions. How Peter Cook could keep people howling all night without ever telling a joke, and no one could remember a thing from the experience except their sides hurt all the next day and they had the time of their lives. (They do mention Henny Youngman's signature line in passing.) But then, none of that would fit in their theory anyway.

What I found most interesting was their time with the cartoon editor of the New Yorker. They put together a list of the approaches that make for a winning caption: finalists' entries didn't waste words on obvious visual elements, did not use excessive punctuation like question marks and exclamation points, and at 8.7 words, were a word shorter than the rest. Also, they did double duty. Being the funniest isn't enough; they have to make a point. Oh.

We are left with a travelogue, filled with bad drivers, missed connections, too much alcohol and not much new data. The stories are backfilled with references to academics and studies that follow references out onto tangents.

If you know going in they weren't going to discover the holy grail, it makes the Humor Code much more readable and enjoyable. It's just a romp in comedy around the world.

David Wineberg
4956828
This 'comic masterpiece' is subtle, complex, ingenious perhaps, but it's not funny. At least not to this 21st century American male under 40. I think the humor was meant for another continent and another time.
Be  warned, the introduction gives away the good plot twist (er . . revelation)  at the end, as do the notes at the rear of the book.
This book is a  small challenge, a whetstone for your sense of irony perhaps. Funny, it's  not.
4542711
I found this book meandering, both in writing and plot; for some that might be a good thing. For those that enjoy this brand of storytelling, there are spaceship loads of humor and silliness. I would think it would be an apt description to call this book, `Monty Python in Space'.

Call me a dull fuddy-duddy or a juvenile idiot, but I've never laughed aloud at trolls inquiring about quests or ministers seeking silly walks. It's not my thing. And for the record--my guilty admission--I don't see the humor of a protagonist mishandling the word `inconceivable', as in certain other Americanized comedies. Maybe I'm low brow, appreciating only crude and dark humor; this sophisticated stuff is lost on me. Silly? Yes. Laugh out loud funny? Not so much.

That's where I'm at with this book. There's plenty of clever dialogue, faulty sentence coordination, and witty word play for everyone--just not me. I'll continue to allow my humor to fester with scrotums and flatulence, thank you very much.
3079202
This live recording emphasizes only one side of the notorious Fugs.  Not that they weren't as libidinous as the material suggests ... anyone really interested should read Ed Sanders's autobiography.  On the other hand, earlier Fugs LP's can be impenetrable.  If it's just dirty jokes you want, well, as the title of this review implies the average HBO comedy special is much worse.  But if you like your porn served up with literary pretensions, cornball charm ... and a beautiful song by William Blake ... this hard-to-get item might interest you.
2130271
I think this would be a good choice for anyone who liked "Where'd You Go, Bernadette?". It's similar in tone and humor. If, like me, WYG,B was a little silly and unrealistic, then skip this one.
3276574
This book seems to have been written for people who miss the good ol' days when men were men and there weren't none of them laws about smackin' your wife when she spoke out of turn or having to wait until your daughter was 16 before you could have sex with her.

But it's kind of funny in a campy sort of way.  It's not meant to be offensive and it's hard to be offended by his pathetic attempts at humor.  It's a bit like what Rush Limbaugh's show would be like if there were a laugh track after every sentence, so his satire of defiantly-ignorant right-wing mouthbreathers wouldn't accidentally be taken seriously.
135731
There are 777 clean "jokes". Some are humorous some really didn't strick me as being really that funny, it all depends on what you consider to be funny. You be your own judge.