Pun Salad

I have a very short list of comedians of whom I'm a fan, but Mike Birbiglia's on it. Nevertheless, this 2016 movie stuck in my streamable Netflix queue for quite awhile; the holiday TV viewing drought encouraged me to check it out. Mike wrote and directed, and is one of the actors involved.

It was in "select theaters" but I'm not sure if it ever made it to "a theater near you".

It centers on a ragtag improvisational comedy group, "The Commune", Despite being modestly successful, for an improv group that means most of the cast have day jobs that they hate, in order to avoid starvation. The overriding ethos of the group is teamwork, since improv demands it. But there's also a considerable amount of professional jealousy, especially when one of the cast makes it into the big time, "Weekend Live", a thinly-disguised SNL. Things are further strained when one of the cast members' father goes into the hospital.

I'm not a fan of improv, and this movie didn't make me one. For a movie centered around comedy, the laughs from me were few and far between.