Jerry Before Seinfeld (2017)

Plenty to Like, Plenty to Dislike

This is one of the few movies I've ever seen where the whole audience broke into spontaneous, loud applause a third of the way in.

Let me be very fair here, this is not the best movie in my opinion. But, this movie is fun, it has purpose and is very enjoyable to watch.

Watching it is like watching the spectacle of a class clown at their best: you laugh at their jokes, instigate their defiance, and "ooooh" when they get in trouble.

I loved this! Jerry back to his roots. If you were expecting new material you apparently didn't read the title of the show. However, I didn't see Seinfeld before his show so most of this was all new to me. Love how the early jokes ended up being one of the most successful TV shows of all time.

One recent Sunday night, my nephew sent me a text with a screenshot of a photo taken of me in the early 80s, when I worked at the Comic Strip in New York City. That's where Jerry performed as a comedian at the start of his career and the setting for Jerry Before Seinfeld. My nephew was watching the film on Netflix, saw the photo and recognized me immediately. When I saw this picture of 'young me' in his text, I was stunned. At first I wondered how the producers could use it without asking my permission. And then I wondered about the context for which it was used. So I watched the show with this in mind. Until I saw the photo, I laughed a lot (hence the rating of 5). But seeing myself in the context in which the photo was presented made me feel sick. At the risk of writing anything that resembles a spoiler, I won't describe that context but I will say it hurt me profoundly. And the insinuation surrounding the photo is, in fact, untrue. It's deeply egotistical on Jerry's part, in fact. The whole 'bit' feels like it was done at my expense, and that seems pathetic to me. As well, when I think of the millions (Jerry was reportedly paid $100,000,000!)that were spent on this film, and the time and effort spent on retrieving archival tape and photos, the fact that no one sought my permission(and I am not that hard to find) is indicative of the utter disregard that the producers had for me as a person and for their portrayal of me(albeit momentarily) in this film. I think using me this way was shameful and so incredibly unnecessary. The film benefited not one iota from it, and its disregard for another being is deeply uncharacteristic of the Jerry who, at the beginning of his career, sat in my living room and dreamt aloud about having a one-bedroom apartment, a sign that he had 'made it.'

"Don't believe in the sixties, the golden age of pop, you glorify the past, when the future dries up" screamed a younger, angrier Bono. Decades later he would prove his own point when he and the boys would decide to embark on what is tantamount to a 'greatest hits' world tour. It is this deliberate milking of nostalgia which seems to be the thinking behind the release of 'Jerry before Seinfeld'. Rather than a two hour rock concert that blows the back off the world's stadia we are instead given a 62 minute cringe-fest as Jerry showcases the material that got him to where he is today. Quite sadly, 'where he is today' translates into being right back at the Comic Strip in New York where he started doing the same jokes as he did in the seventies.Let me be frank, this is weak stuff. I would imagine even back in the day this was fairly weak and safe material but as Jerry repeatedly tells us in the cut away sequences that punctuate the act, he didn't care. He didn't care if the audiences didn't like him personally. He didn't care if he bombed. He was living the life he wanted to live as a stand up comedian and that's what mattered most to him. To some this might be a quasi inspirational sentiment but in Jerry's case it comes off as self indulgent and self satisfied. No more is this accurately highlighted than the sequence where all the pages of all the jokes that Jerry has ever written are stretched out end to end on a city street. Jerry sits in the middle of this, chooses a page at random (please!) and reads out the joke there upon. The sequence ends with Jerry laughing at his own joke and we are returned to the slow death that is the live gig. Children of New York you may not go out and play on your bikes today, Seinfeld is re-living his glory days all the way up the street. This is not cutting edge stuff, jokes about losing one sock in the laundry never were in my book. There is also a straight, almost verbatim steal of a Billy Connolly joke somewhere around the final third which really annoyed me. With the exception of his cameo role on 'Louis' I've never had any particular love for Seinfeld before this show, now I have no love or respect. I'm sure he'll lose little sleep about it.Apparently this is one of two planned specials commissioned by Netflix. Even if the next one turns out to be all new material I certainly won't be watching. This was plain old awful. The End. (hopefully)

I really like Seinfeld and I love Seinfeld the TV show. But this special really disappointed me simply because most of the jokes(70% in my rough estimate) are old material. I am talking about jokes from Seinfeld the TV show. I do understand that this is special is about his history but I can't help to think he should have included way more new material.