My Review of "Leslie Jones: Time Machine"

I think Leslie Jones is hilarious but I only know her from her Saturday Night Live persona. Regardless if she wrote her own characters on the show or not her characters were always distinctly Leslie Jones. No one could do her characters quite like her. So I was interested when I first heard that she was getting a stand-up special on Netflix.

I've been watching some really good comedy Netflix specials lately from Dave Chappelle, Aziz Ansari, Bill Burr all the way to relatively unknowns like Ronny Chieng. Surely Leslie Jones' special had to be good because the caliber of comedy seemed to be outstanding. I have to watch this one.

After watching the special I still have the same perspective of Leslie Jones. I still think she's funny but this isn't a good special. There are a few laughs here and there but her onstage antics started to get old after a while. She has some good timing with her comedy but there's only so much screaming to make us question the jokes we're listening to.

The screaming was funny for a few of the jokes but she seemed to try to get away with using the screams for too many punchlines and it was getting old. Speaking of repetition, she repeats a lot of stuff on stage. I don't know if this is a tactic to kill time or not but it's pretty evident that she repeats jokes and lines over and over again. It almost seemed as this one hour special was a drawn out 15 minute special.

In fact, I think she could have used all the material she had in this special to make a killer 15 minute special. She is animated and high energy despite the complaints she has of her age. I like how she's unapologetic for who she is and what she does as she compares young adults of this generation compared to what she was when she was the same age.

As you can guess with the title, the theme to this comedy special is time. At times it feels as if she's giving this generations young women advice as to how to enjoy their youth. I love the stories she had of her wild youth. She should have added more stories instead of extend the special with so many screams.

She interacts a lot with the crowd which was a nice little change of pace. I only wished she dived a little deeper into her interactions with the crowd. It was fast and witty but we needed more. It's not like she had that much material to play around with in the first place. This would have been a good fun filler because she seemed to be good at it.

Although I didn't quite enjoy this special as much as I would have liked. I have to say that my girlfriend that was watching it with me seemed to enjoy the special much more than me. It makes sense too because it seemed like the material was targeted to a female audience. Still, most of the material she used could be understood by all. There is absolutely some material that she used that not everyone could understand. She tries to explain some of the jokes to the audience because even she understood that not all of the audience would understand the context.

Overall, I don't think this was a great special. I actually got really bored and almost fell asleep in some parts of the special. Her redeeming factors are her charm and high energy. She had me going for a few of her jokes but not enough to suggest this special. I have to give this special a little higher score because my girlfriend did enjoy it so maybe I didn't quite understand this special as much as I should have. Due to the fact that my girlfriend enjoyed this special I'll generously give this special a 5 out of 10. It is definitely not a special for me and I honestly couldn't suggest this special to any of my friends.