Patton Oswalt/Bob Rubin review – cuddly curmudgeon finds midlife bliss
The American standup Patton Oswalt’s last special, Annihilation (2017), addressed the sudden death of his wife, the true-crime writer Michelle McNamara. It was widely admired, though not – obviously – for its surfeit of joyous comedy. That’s where I Love Everything comes in. It finds Oswalt, now 51, blissfully remarried, and delivering a frothy set about ageing, parenting and his theory of Jesus. As per Bill Hicks on comedy and people getting hurt, midlife contentment (“Being married is the best!”) isn’t always the richest territory for standup. But Oswalt’s turn of phrase and cuddly curmudgeon persona keep the laughs coming – even if they’re seldom of the belly variety.
He sets out his stall early, announcing his half-century. There’s a cliche about wanting to be racist in his dotage and a routine about breakfast foods getting boring as you age. The latter is not unusual here, both in slightly outstaying its welcome (a later routine on Louis CK does the same) and in its diverting writerly flourishes: “I’m eating cereal that tastes like an unpopular teenager’s poetry …” The loss of one’s youth is as trusty a standup subject as they come, and Oswalt wrings the first third of his set from his newfound love of hiking, the effort now required to have sex (it’s compared, eye-catchingly, to an understaffed McDonald’s), and – funniest of all – his dismay at hard-bodied fitness freaks.
The show’s engagement with current affairs is glancing, although Oswalt’s sole political gag (less about Trump than about being a comedian in the age of Trump) is very good. There’s also that section on “jerking off to the unwilling”, which marvels at the sexual peccadilloes of Oswalt’s unnamed former colleague. It generates a frisson that can’t be matched by material about our host’s wallpaper sub-contractor, or by an unconvincing skit about his anxiety that his recent wedding went too smoothly.
I found the foundations of Oswalt’s Jesus section a bit wobbly: the messiah’s activities are remembered, he suggests, only because no one else behaved altruistically in biblical times. Not for the first time, one wonders whether a US standup routine about Christianity needs an audience in the US (where Christianity is more of a going concern) to really fly. Likewise, Oswalt’s closer about the fast-food chain Denny’s – which it’s possible to enjoy as a non-American but would be richer if we’d had the dubious pleasure of experiencing Denny’s ourselves.
If by the end of Oswalt’s hour you find yourself craving something more offbeat or abrasive, there’s a bonus set on offer from veteran comic Bob Rubin, whom Oswalt introduces as “a huge influence”. Rubin’s set, Oddities and Rarities, has a much stronger flavour than Oswalt’s. It’s also harder to stomach. Bug-eyed and barking, he totes paranoid fantasies and tales of narcotic misadventure. It’s like Kramer from Seinfeld crossed with the loopy Canadian standup Tony Law – but less funny than either, and more inclined to fetishise his own kraziness.
Netflix calls it “a wild ride [and] something really, really different” – which, by the standards of Netflix comedy, it probably is. There are some choice lines, but Rubin’s brand of wildness starts feeling samey, and fails to conceal some witless routines, like the one about Uber, or the one speculating lamely on the origins of Stonehenge. Maybe it’s just me, but the pill-poppin’, law-breakin’ anecdote that ends his set makes Oswalt’s midlife hiking habit seem thrilling by comparison.
