Film Club Review: Conan O’Brian Can’t Stop

Summary: A documentary of Conan O’Brian getting his tour ready after he was kicked off TV by NBC. Whats great about it is that he’s obviously pissed off at what happened to him, but he’s trying to contain his anger as best he can, sometimes succeeding and sometimes not. Its really quite fascinating to watch.

I like getting backstage peaks into how certain things are run (i.e. West Wing, Entourage), and so I had a lot of fun seeing the daily processes of Conan the comedian and his crew working things out. We even get to see inside the great relationship between him and his assistant Sona. And they really don’t hold back with the honesty; when he gets pissed off for having to meet every single family members of one of his crew members, we get to see him letting off steam about it later. It really is quite raw.

There were a couple things that bugged me, not about the documentary but about Conan and the tour itself. There are quite a few times during meetings when Conan can’t go two seconds without doing something silly, like punching people or making weird noises or talking into a banana. He reminds me of that class clown from high school who tried way to hard to get attention.

Watching this also made me realize that I would have never wanted to go to one of his shows. Why? There were so many musical numbers! Yes, they were trying to be song parodies for the most part, but man that would annoy me. This is a personal taste mind you, but I don’t really know why he went down the musical route for his tour. If I would have went I would have felt ripped off, going to his show expecting comedy but instead having to try to figure out his lyrics so that I could possibly laugh, and having to suffer through him dancing like an idiot.

But that’s just a rant on something I noticed in the film. Its not a criticism of the film itself. This is an interesting documentary with a notable celebrity at an emotional tipping point. 8/10