Frank Caliendo: All Over the Place (2007 TV Special) User Reviews

"Yeah I've been booed before, but I'll be booed again."

[classicsoncall · 7/10 · 30 April 2020]

I've only seen Frank Caliendo once before and thought he was a pretty good celebrity impersonator. This made for television special taped for TBS showcases a wide range of Caliendo's voices, but watching today it has a decidedly dated quality. Filmed in 2007, it's more than a decade removed from present day reality, and the emphasis on Presidents George W. Bush and Bill Clinton give it a slightly surreal quality, so if you're a younger viewer you might miss a lot of the nuance. Some of his targets however are timeless for those old enough to appreciate the era in which this was made. He's pretty spot on with impersonations of Al Pacino, Jerry Seinfeld, Jeff Goldblum, and of course his favorite target, former football player and current color commentator John Madden. Only trouble is, he probably loses a good portion of his audience, particularly the female side, with celebrities like Madden. He does get into some obscure stuff when he calls up characters from cartoon shows, which you have to assume he does well judging by the audience reaction to some of those spots. For me, a certain amount of it just blew by me. But the guy is entertaining, and if you have the DVD of this performance, you'll catch a few extra characters with the bonus materials included. A couple of those, like Robin Williams and Chris Farley, should have been part of the main presentation. But with the disc, you get them all.

Too Much Recycled Content

[ianlueck · 5/10 · 17 October 2016]

The Comedy Central Presents special featuring Frank Caliendo is one of my favorites, with the comedian speeding through a large number of impressions in only twenty minutes. So when I saw this special on DVD, I was hoping for some more new impressions. Unfortunately, Frank mostly recycled his material from the CCP special. This is disappointing for two reasons: One, the obvious; you feel like you've paid for the same content twice. And two, it arguably doesn't do Caliendo any favors, painting him as someone who is content to pander with familiar punchlines instead of coming up with new stuff. This isn't like Jerry Seinfeld's "I'm Telling You For the Last Time", where the gimmick was that Jerry was retiring his old material so he wanted to give the audience one last taste of it; Caliendo was an up-and-coming comedian at the time so it's disappointing he was already in reruns. And even worse, the special is three times as long as his CC special, so impressions that are funny at first (such as George W. Bush) tend to get old when they're repeated so many times over the course of an hour.

That said, if you've never seen the aforementioned CC special, this is still an entertaining hour. While his John Madden impression is arguably his most famous, I found I was laughing hardest at his Yoda, Shaggy (from Scooby-Doo), and Chris Farley impressions. And I liked the self-deprecation, such as when he apologizes for the constant assault of "Frank TV" ads on TBS.

This special opens and closes with a couple brief skits where the Fox NFL Sunday hosts claim that Frank isn't funny in his dressing room. They're okay. But one particularly puzzling choice is that, at random times during the special, it will cut to the audience, where Frank, dressed as a celebrity he's impersonating (such as Jay Leno), will offer their reactions. Obviously, these bits were taped apart from the stand-up, and it's jarring whenever it happens.

If you've never seen Frank Caliendo, this special is worth watching, but if you've seen his CC special, there's really no reason to bother with this.