Cynical Cinema

The Big Gay Sketch show is a series that just had it’s second season come out on DVD from Paramount Home Entertainment. It’s produced by Rosie O’Donnell and it is exactly as it sounds. Sketch comedy pieces with homosexual and lesbian themes. Season Two features guest appearances from Chastity Bono, Kate Clinton, Elaine Stritch and O’Donnell herself, and those are some of the best sketches. But they are about all this show has going for it. This show seems to be relying a little more on gimmicks than most sketch comedy shows. This really has been done already, and it was done a hundred times better than this by the Kids in the Hall. Just doing a skit where characters happen to be gay is not in itself funny. The idea is that you have a sketch that’s funny. And perhaps adding the gay or lesbian element to that same sketch can make it much funnier.

But The Big Gay Sketch Show doesn’t seem to get that concept. They take the gay stereotypes that are the main source of humour among gay comedians and gay movie comedies and gay TV shows. Like, Liza Minelli jokes. Which is the equivalent, at this point, of a straight female comedian making “men always have to hold the remote, and they leave the toilet seat up” jokes. Oh. A man dressed up as Liza Minelli. And she is a drunken superhero. I get it. The best recurring theme of this series is when they re-do old TV shows, re-imagined as gay or lesbian shows. The Facts of Life episode is priceless. But there isn’t enough good stuff, and the stuff that really is good is spread too thin. This one can be skipped.