Janeane Garofalo: If You Will, Live in Seattle Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		3.5
Video		3.5
Audio		4.0
Extras		1.0
Overall		3.5

Janeane Garofalo: If You Will, Live in Seattle Blu-ray Movie Review

Should you?

Reviewed by Casey Broadwater December 21, 2010

Am I the only one who saw the cover for this Blu-ray release and thought the title was If You Will Live—as in, reside—In Seattle? There really needs to be a colon after “Will.” Anyway, Janeane Garofalo—comedienne, actress, activist, and Gen-X slacker icon—is back! And how you react to that statement will likely determine whether or not you’ll want to pick up this one-hour standup comedy special. For some, Garofalo is known—and avoided—for being the outspoken hardcore feminist atheist liberal who infamously called Tea Party protesters racists and “a bunch of teabagging rednecks.” Obviously, she’s not winning any fans on the right. Others, however, see her as the very embodiment of the irony, sarcasm, and acerbic wit of the 1990s—in a good way. If You Will, Garofalo’s first standup special in 13 years, is for these folks, the wistful Gen-X’ers who are now rapidly approaching middle age.

Most of Garofalo’s new routine is spent opining about getting older and, if not necessarily wiser, at least more mature. She jokes, off the bat, about being referred to as a “compact elder lesbian”—she’s not gay—and launches into a long riff about Spanx, the form-altering undergarments that women wear to look trimmer than they actually are. (“When you take the Spanx off, it’s like water balloons…a melting candle…a loose meat sandwich.”) This transitions, naturally, into her self-proclaimed celibacy—much to the chagrin of her boyfriend of ten years—and how, by giving up the need to desire and be desired by others, she now feels “like Siddhartha under a fig tree, contemplating nirvana.” She admits to watching porn, but “in the same way that I like to watch the Food Network all day, but I don’t want to cook anything.” This fusty, I no longer give a crap- ness extends to her neo-luddite views on technology, as she waxes on about the kids these days, with their “web presence” and lack of quality control when “creating content.” (The specific example she gives is a decidedly NSFW website called Cake Farts. Just remember, readers, there are things that you can never un-see. This is one of them. And no, I’m not going to provide a link.)

Surprisingly, Garofalo is light on the political and religious material. She briefly responds to the controversy over her Tea Party comments, but she doesn’t back down, comparing the tea partiers to women from the exploito-reality show I Didn’t Know I Was Pregnant—just substitute racism for pregnancy. Just as quickly, she discusses how she joined the Catholic Youth Organization as a teenager after a kid at a make-out party made a “manual affrontery” to her “bathing suit, taint area” and tried to “manhandle” her “uh, parts.” This is not the first nor last reference to what Garofalo might call “lady bits,” as quite a few of her tangents veer into humorously gynecological territory. There’s a whole section about how Garofalo assumes that Natalie Portman has “no unsavory lower GI functions,” and that instead of genitals, she probably has “a beautiful, buffed marble frontice piece…perfect, lovely, smooth, like an art installation.” Other topics include her “ax to grind with Applebees,” her love of kittens and fat baby feet, the creepiness of plainclothes mailmen, and creating a national drinking game out of infomercials.

Standup comedy is such a subjective form—how much you enjoy a particular comedian depends imperatively on your taste, morality, and worldview —so it’s impossible to make any sweeping statements about how funny If You Will is or isn’t. If you’re a longtime Garofalo fan, absolutely, you’ll eat this stuff up. It’s vintage Janeane—drolly observational, witty, and verbose—and a return to form after years of absence from the standup scene. Likewise—and I don’t want to generalize here, but—if you’re a moral or political conservative and you’ve either a.) always dismissed Garofalo as a raving liberal lunatic or b.) have no clue who she is, If You Will probably won’t be your cup of comedic tea. Personally, I found Garofalo to be offbeat and fun—if not laugh-out-loud funny—but then again, I always have.

Janeane Garofalo: If You Will, Live in Seattle Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Shot, like most comedy specials, on high definition video, Janeane Garofalo: If You Will arrives on Blu-ray with a 1080i/AVC-enoded transfer that probably doesn't look too different from the program's original television broadcast—compression warts and all. The image is obviously high definition, but this isn't exactly a sparkling HD presentation. The overall look is slightly smeary and soft, with a distinct lack of fine texture even in close-ups. Since the encode is interlaced and not progressive, you'll also notice combing artifacts and the shimmer of aliasing in close lines, like the pipes that form the backdrop of the stage or the frames of Garafalo's glasses. Combine that with a low bit-rate and you'll see occasional macroblocking in out-of-focus portions of the image. Still, the picture is more than serviceable, with deep black levels and strong color reproduction. Just don't expect to be wowed.

Janeane Garofalo: If You Will, Live in Seattle Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

On the sound front, the disc's DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 surround track does exactly what it needs to do—broadcast Garofalo's characteristically nasal voice clearly. There are no hiccups, drop-outs, muffles, or crackles, just a clean, perfectly balanced vocal mix from the center channel that convincingly conveys the acoustics of the Moore Theater. Adding to this core presentation, the surround speakers are used to effectively put us in the audience, filling the soundfield with quiet but appreciable ambience in the form of applause/hooting/hollering, etc. There's not much else to say, and you really couldn't ask for more.

Do note that there are no subtitle options available.

Janeane Garofalo: If You Will, Live in Seattle Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

The disc's sole bonus features are a pair of moderately funny comic shorts. In Janeane On Pets (1080i, 6:01), Garofalo sits on her bed, wearing an apron, talking about killing her dogs with blunt force trauma and having a 4-year-old as a pet, and in Congressman's Dream (1080i, 5:14), a fake conservative congressman conducts a fake interview with the notoriously liberal comedienne.

Janeane Garofalo: If You Will, Live in Seattle Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

It's pretty simple. Do you like Janeane Garofalo? If yes, you'll probably enjoy If You Will, her return to standup. If, however, you can't stand her deadpan cynicism and wish she'd retreat into history like the rest of the 1990s, then you'll definitely want to look elsewhere for laughs. Of course, it follows that if you're indifferent to the dry-as-vermouth comedienne, her latest standup routine will do little to stoke your interest. Tastes in comedy are as subjective as they come, so let your gut instinct be your guide.