For his fourth Netflix stand-up comedy special, Bert Kreischer may have lost 45 pounds, but he’s still the same ol’ Bert, ripping off his shirt, ripping into booze, and loving his wife and kids, no matter how much trouble he causes for them. Maybe he is as lucky as he says he is?!?
BERT KREISCHER: LUCKY: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?
The Gist: Since last we saw Kreischer onstage by himself without his shirt on in 2023’s Razzle Dazzle, the comedian has starred and produced his own feature film, The Machine, based upon one of his oldest and most popular true-life stories. Initially released in theaters, the film thrived once it landed on Netflix, debuting in the global Netflix Top 10 chart.
Kreischer also has maintained a presence in Netflix’s big live programming efforts, whether it was delivering jokes alongside his longtime podcast partner Tom Segura during the Roast of Tom Brady or reporting from the sidelines during the streaming giant’s first live NFL broadcast on Christmas. You may also have seen Bert being Bert in live telecasts for CBS on New Year’s Eve or just recently during UFC 313 in Las Vegas.
All of it helps promote this newest special, which he filmed back in his hometown of Tampa following a 140-city international arena tour, as well as his third annual “Fully Loaded Comedy Festival” bringing his funny friends on the road with him throughout the summer.
As he told Variety in a recent interview about the kinship he feels with his fans, who identify with him: “These dudes [my fans] are guys who feel lucky to have the chick they’re with, lucky to have the life they have, lucky to have the kids they have. And that one night is the night to cut loose.”
What Comedy Specials Will It Remind You Of?: As much as Kreischer might like to name-drop Tom Segura (with whom they’ve also launched their own vodka company, Por Osos), the comedian who may be more similar to Kreischer in terms of temperament as just a fun guy to be the life of the party, then Shane Gillis is more Kreischer’s comedy speed.
Memorable Jokes: Most comedians would soak in the applause break after announcing they’d just lost 45 pounds. Not Bert. He just giggles while admitting:“I’m still fat. But it got away from me for a little while.”
Of course, for Kreischer, the weight-loss kudos serve only to set up an initial flurry of jokes about how even just a slightly slimmer frame has changed his literal perspective on sex, while aging into their 50s has dramatically altered the logistics of sex for both he and his wife. You bet your sweet Bert there are act-outs. No matter how bad it may make him look. There are act-outs.
Bert also makes himself the butt of the joke in explaining the incident that proved to him that he needed reading glasses.
But outlandish inappropriateness is the name of the game in a Kreischer story, whether he’s filling us in on the “baby redneck” member of his wife’s family who makes him look like a relative genius, or whether he’s revealing to what lengths he’ll go (or won’t go) to give up his first-class airplane seat to switch with his wife to sit next to a woman with special needs. Or even when he acknowledges some of the times he has sounded outright dumb in situations with his friends or family.
It’s all in good, clean, well maybe not so clean fun.
Only Kreischer could learn his daughter had been caught smoking weed, and turn to his then-TV co-star Snoop Dogg (from 2021’s TBS game show, Go-Big Show) for advice, only to also completely misunderstand the rapper’s delightful solution.
Our Take: In the most literal sense, Kreischer tells a couple of stories to explain how his sense of good luck rubs off on complete strangers, encapsulated by his self-given tagline: “My name’s Bert Kreischer. I find lost things.”
But Bert also truly feels lucky and says so in this hour. How else to explain his long run of success that came out of being such a party-hard college student that Rolling Stone profiled him and National Lampoon made a movie based on him, even before he became a comedian? He feels lucky to have a loving wife and daughters, plus an ever-growing comedy family, and he gets to entertain thousands of people at a time on the road, wherever he goes.
To the point now where even his fans are tossing their tops in the audience.
There might not be any singular story in this hour that quite measures up to “The Machine,” and it might be too much to expect, considering how fun Kreischer’s life has become, that he could simply manufacture any real-life circumstances these days to match what happened to him in his youth. But any and all of the tales he tells here are certainly good enough to generate sitcom episodes, which in the previous comedian-sitcom boom, would’ve seemed only too natural of a fit for Kreischer. No matter his weight.
Our Call: If you don’t really know Kreischer, then this most definitely is not the hour to introduce yourself to his comedy. If that’s you, and that’s why you clicked on this to begin with, then SKIP IT. This one’s really more just for his die-hard fans. The ones who take their shirts off with him. The ones who get it when Kreischer giggles, snorts and even sometimes shrieks in delight at his own jokes.
Sean L. McCarthy works the comedy beat. He also podcasts half-hour episodes with comedians revealing origin stories: The Comic’s Comic Presents Last Things First.
The post Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Bert Kreischer: Lucky’ On Netflix, A Topless Comedian With A Bottomless Well Of Stories appeared first on Decider.
