Film

Vince Vaughn’s Wild West Comedy Show: 30 Days & 30 Nights—Hollywood to the Heartland

Vince Vaughn’s Wild West Comedy Show: 30 Days & 30 Nights—Hollywood to the Heartland

**

Vince Vaughn, Ahmed Ahmed, John Caparulo, Peter Billingsley, Jon Favreau

Directed by Ari Sandel

Rated PG-13

Opens Friday

Vince Vaughn isn’t so much funny as good at surrounding himself with the authentically comedic (Jon Favreau, Ben Stiller, Owen Wilson, Will Ferrell). He’s has never been better at insulating himself with more interesting counterparts than in this excessively titled vanity project, recorded over 6,000 miles in September 2005. The documentary follows Vaughn and four starry-eyed comics he plucks from Sunset Boulevard’s Comedy Store as they whine, visit tourist traps and tell adequate jokes to entertainment-starved yokels in the South and Midwest. The host basks in his own charitable glow; without his benevolence how could such hamlets as Phoenix, Dallas, Atlanta, Nashville, Cleveland, Detroit and Chicago temporarily escape their dreary existence?

There’s something for everyone on the tour, at least stereotype-wise. The T-shirted redneck (John Caparulo). The opinionated Jersey Guido (Bret Ernst). The highly animated metrosexual (Sebastian Maniscalo). Even Ahmed Ahmed, the most down-to-earth and talented of the bunch in real life, isn’t presented as much more than “the Middle Eastern one.” And for fans of ill-conceived sketch comedy, there are half-baked premises featuring Vaughn, Favreau, Keir O’Donnell, Justin Long and the now-grown firearms-obsessed kid from A Christmas Story.

The few moments of introspection pass too quickly. And where is the footage of after-show partying? When Buck Owens and Dwight Yoakum cameos provide the most heart in a film about stand-up, it’s easy to see why comedy is widely viewed as the most frivolous of art forms. – J.J. Gordon

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