Deep in the Heart of Texas: Dave Chappelle Live at Austin City Limits (TV Special 2017)
7KDeep in the Heart of Texas: Dave Chappelle Live at Austin City Limits: Directed by Stan Lathan. With Dave Chappelle, Morgan Freeman. Dave Chappelle gives his stand about racially charged run-ins, celebrity scandals and fatherly dilemmas in his stand-up set at Austin’s Moody Theater.
“This is the first of the Netflix specials that were widely hyped due to it being his u0026#39;returnu0026#39;. Iu0026#39;ve never quite seen him as brilliant as others, so I decided to let all the hype and fuss pass before watching in a few weeks. This first special was actually a year or so ago when it was recorded, and some of the references are dated – an issue for some, but they still worked without being up to the minute fresh. The crowd are good, and Chappelle does seem to enjoy being on stage – and his charisma and timing is evident throughout, and I did laugh quite a lot.u003cbr/u003eu003cbr/u003eThat said, some of his material gave me pause. I know he is a comedian and not a politician, but even with that u0026#39;passu0026#39; he did seem quite relaxed about his jokes about homosexual stereotypes, and transgender people; when he does African-American jokes it sort of feels more u0026#39;okayu0026#39; simply because he is doing it from within rather than pointing at others. With this material it was not cruel, and it did have an opinion behind it, but it didnu0026#39;t totally sit with me. Likewise, his apparent attack on mandatory vaccinations came out of nowhere. These and a few others made me wonder why I was mostly okay with Chappelle doing this, but with someone else I would not be.u003cbr/u003eu003cbr/u003eSome of his other material is a bit broad too. Some of it doesnu0026#39;t really fly as a narrative, but then you have others which rely too much on crudity – crudity with wit works when he does it (as he mostly does), but somethings there seems to be less below the surface. A solid and mostly funny special – but the content limited it for me, and I do hope the next special can be stronger.”
