NEWS
Jim Carrey's early stand-up
24 Feb 1999 Exclusive review by BCDavis
And I do mean EARLY, baby! We’re talking CBC-TV and Yuk-Yuk’s from the early and middle 1980s. Some stuff Lord Jim possibly would like to never see again. It was my pleasure to lay my peepers on this video footage, and now write up this review.
First off, I’d like to say that Jim’s amazing entertainment abilities have come with not only a lot of talent, but also a lot of tenacity. He’s not kidding when he says he works hard. One show featured a behind-the-scenes type of interview with a very young Jim Carrey on the stand-up circuit. He’d go in front of a body-length mirror, run through facial contortions, body moves, stretches, anything to turn on the energy. Then, afterwards he'd crash, exhausting himself after the performance. He was incredible the impressions were unbelievable. He'd physically transform into the person he was imitating. He'd go from Jim Carrey to Henry Fonda to Sammy Davis Jr. in just a heartbeat.
When he was imitating singers, his voice would change to match theirs male or FEMALE. My favorite was, er, is Billy Holiday singing “Nobody’s Business”. When Jim sang that song, with a perfect Holiday voice, I nearly choked on my late-night snack: he was THAT GOOD. The flowers in his hair was a lovely touch icing on the cake.
Other footage I saw included his first television appearance… ever. The white polyester suit nearly blinded me. He was 18 years old. He did several impressions. He looked like he was a tad nervous (in a deer-in-the-headlights sort of way). His act itself was, well, let’s just say he’s gotten a whole lot better since then.
Overall, the total mass of footage was not only entertaining in a wax-museum kind of way, it was darn well fascinating. It’s a wonderful overview documentary of Jim Carrey’s comedy evolution.
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