SnoopyStyle
In 2009, Conan O'Brien replaces Jay Leno as the host of the Tonight Show. Seven months later, he is let go and Leno returns. NBC pays him a large payout but he is forbidden from TV, radio and the internet for 6 months. He decides to put on a live variety show across US and Canada, The Legally Prohibited Tour, with his TV cohorts. This is mostly behind-the-scene footage. In that way, this is not really a concert film. This is a slice of his work life. One gets to see his work process. It's fascinating for fans but also an insight into the comedy process for non-fans. I'm a big fan and this is lots of fun. His bit with Jack McBrayer is hilarious and also ends with something interesting. It also shows Conan to be human with anger, doubts and working it all out.
gavin6942
A documentary on Conan O'Brien's comedy tour of the U.S. and Canada after leaving his post at "The Tonight Show" and severing his relationship with NBC.Early on, we see some good humor with the mock fight at the protests (although this is more a reflection on Conan's fans than the man himself). But then, it goes wild...I have mixed feelings on this. I love Conan, and the clips from the tour (on stage) are pretty good. But the behind the scenes moments are strange -- he sometimes comes off as angry (at the wrong people) and childish. He was wrongfully removed from NBC, but he is far more bitter than probably necessary... though this improves as the tour continues.(Roger Ebert actually sums up the negativity nicely: "Everyone around him pays a price. He relentlessly nibbles away at his support system, picks on his personal assistant, needles his sidekick Andy Richter and dominates his "writers" so compulsively that I can hardly recall one of them being allowed to say anything at meetings. He seems to consider them more of an audience.") Some people have commented on the anti-Semitic comment made by a fan. I do not really wish to get into it, but I will say Conan deserves a little credit for putting the kid in his place without being too harsh... it was a bad word to say, but was clearly not meant as hatred.
Ryan_MYeah
Today's review is for Conan O'Brien Can't Stop, Rodman Flender's chronological documentation of late night talk show host Conan O'Brien. The film explains his controversial, and highly publicized departure from NBC in 2009, and then leads into him hitting the road, and staging a comedy tour called the "Legally Prohibited From Being Funny on Television Tour".Conan O'Brien is a witty, fast paced comic. We're all too familiar with his comical side, but I doubt we've ever seen anything from him in the vein of this movie. What we see of Conan is raw and unfiltered. The comedic side has a certain levity to it, but there's also a balance with dramatic heft, and trying to show us what he's going through. We see a man who loves doing what he does, and how he does it just as much for himself as he does for his audience. Sure, there's a couple moments of pure cringe rather than laughs, but this is a serious recommendation.*** out of ****
Rockwell_Cronenberg
A surprising powerful and interesting look into the mind of one of the most intelligent, innovative and personally inspiring minds existing in our current culture. Conan O'Brien is a brilliant man who was treated very unfairly by NBC and this picture does a great job of documenting all of the turmoil and conflicting emotions that came as a result of that debacle, along with his concert tour that came afterwards when he was banned from being on television. Conan is brave enough for letting this relatively dark chapter of his life be put on film forever, and the makers of the film used it as an opportunity to showcase the man behind the hilarious hour of television he gives us four nights a week.The film did a superb job of stripping back the layers and showing every side of this man, from his self-effacing humor to his anger over the pressures of the tour and his unjust treatment by NBC, to his genuine joy for life and performing in front of an audience. This is a man who spent over a decade getting to perform to a crowd and make people laugh several times a week, living his dream only to have it stripped away in one of the most childish and bizarre disasters in late night television history. We get to see what happens when that dream of his came crashing down and he had to build himself back up. There are so many great scenes throughout, ones that had me in stitches like when he laughed at the fact that he would never be caught dead on a network like TBS and ones that had me almost in tears of joy or frustration, like when one of his back-up singers brought in about a dozen people to meet him after an exhausting show he performed that he now had to entertain or when he was forced to schmooze a Hollywood crowd at a party for hours before having to do another insanely exhausting show. They really highlighted the pressure that was put on this guy almost every day and how easily people take for granted someone with a genuinely kind heart who just wants to make people happy.That being said, they didn't make Conan ever seem like this martyr for amusement all the time, they definitely didn't shy away from showing some unlikable characteristics of his. They let him have his moments where he was just being a frustrated jerk, which made the whole thing very human and authentic. I love Conan to death and he will always inspire me and the film would have rang very false if there hadn't been moments where he as kind of a prick. In his situation I feel like it would be pretty impossible not to have a ton of moments where the pressure and frustration become too much and you just want to lash out. But his honest craving for making people happy shines through almost all of the time, even in his darkest moments of depression and confusion over what he was supposed to do at that time.It's a fantastic documentary and it really exceeded my expectations. It made me laugh even more than I was expecting it to, which was a ton, and provided a surprising level of insight into his psyche at that time and who he really is behind everything. His relationships with those around him were heartwarming, especially the comradery between him and his assistant Sona; I thought their sarcastic back-and-forth and constant support of one another was really beautiful. Their relationship alone is enough to merit watching the film. In the end, it's a film that had me laughing frequently and thinking quite often about the levels of who Conan is and, ultimately, the levels of who I am as well. He will always be a huge inspiration to me and this exploration just further solidifies that.