Paul Shore performs through May 4. $12-$19. Yuk Yuk’s, 224 Richmond W. 416-967-6425.
The puzzling thing about Pauly Shore has always been that someone who grew up in the comedy clubs of L.A. came away from it seeming to have learned so little.
Which was easier to overlook back in his heyday as MTV’s braying, sun-baked party boy — so often playing to crowds of heavily Kahlua-ed Spring Breakers — or even as the star of Bio-Dome. No, he wasn’t especially funny, but he had a shtick and, to give the guy his due, he went quite a distance with nothing in his tank except “bu’uddy” and some entry-level buffoonery.
But here we are several years into the supposed relaunch of his career, and it’s the same-old, same-old. Except now the erstwhile Weasel is a middle-aged man-child doing standup to less adoring, slightly more sober crowds.
And what does he bring? Half-hearted self-mockery about being a Hollywood wash-up — sloppily delivered at that — and some heard-it-all-before filler about airport security and trying to pick up women in clubs.
Seriously bro, what the hell? Sam Kinison was your babysitter and we get airport jokes?
Though he still brings a certain infectious idiocy to a room, Shore seemed uneasy and confused by the crowd on Thursday night, the first of his weekend stay at Yuk Yuk’s, and often fell back on cheap-laugh lines to prop up the stale and struggling set.
“This is me sober,” he remarked more than once, after knocking over someone’s drink or tripping over his mic wire, “you should see me drunk.”
A better idea would have been to bring back Shaun Majumder who, in his warm-up set, brought more funny with a short and admittedly unrehearsed bit about his new life in L.A. Majumder’s only been down there for a few years but his take on Hollywood life is already funnier than Shore’s. And Shore grew up there.