Wanda Sykes: Sick and Tired

Rating NR Formats DVD Genre stand-up comedy Starring Wanda Sykes Directed by Michael Drumm Publisher Image Entertainment External Links Official Image Entertainment Website

About twenty minutes into Wanda Sykes: Sick and Tired, I thought to myself, "I would really like to see the audience." Wanda chose to film her HBO Special in all of places, Seattle, Washington. That coupled with Sykes' style lead to my inquiry as to the type of person that would see Wanda live, and finally at the end, the house lights come up and the audience is...drum roll, please...white.

Now, I started thinking as to why a female African-American comic would draw such a largely white audience. Location? Maybe, but then you ask why would she chose a location known for rain and Microsoft. I hope I am not coming across as racist, I am simply a student of media and the arts, and therefore I have been trained to pay attention to not only the message and the medium, but also the audience. The insert that comes with the DVD promotes other titles from Image Entertainment, and let's just say that most titles involve "Hip Hop Honeys" or basketball. One might get the wrong idea about Wanda Sykes. She may be black, but I would not label her a "urban". Sykes blurs any kind of line of demarcation, both gender- and ethnic-wise. And to put it simply, Wanda Sykes is very funny.

Sick and Tired is perhaps not the best of Wanda I have seen, but it is a great stand-up show. Sykes engages in so many ways: She has that voice, and that face that conveys so much with the raising of her eyebrows. Nobody says "I don't give a fuck" quite like Wanda. Sykes' body language and physical humor show that this woman is very comfortable with herself, and then when she talks about how she likes to watch porn in hotels and dirty-talks to herself, you realize that no topic is off-limits. However, though Sykes' "crass feminism" fits it with the Sarah Silverman and Margaret Cho crowd, she is a style unto herself. She doesn't seem to want to shock, per se, but rather these are just the thoughts she has on a daily basis.

Her topics range from the crass to the esoteric, such as her rant about NASA and the space program, which seemed to go over well in Seattle. She equates NASA as welfare for really smart people, and gee, did the NW nerds love that. She doles out the criticism to Bush in spades, although a truly informed public might find the fallacies in her reasoning, as some of her gripes could be traced back to previous administrations. But then I believe in a little thing called "artistic license", so I let all that go. Sykes' charm more than makes up for her failure of historical perspective.

Though not the best stand-up out there, Wanda Sykes: Sick and Tired is pretty funny, and it engages the viewer, especially those that enjoy the capacity of complex thought. And for those who don't, she throws in some sex jokes, too. The DVD claims that Wanda is "one of Entertainment Weekly's 25 funniest people in America," and yes, I would agree. However, I would agree not on the strength of Sick and Tired. Wanda is so funny because she is not only witty, but quick-witted. Her show on Comedy Central, "Wanda Does It," proves this, and Sick and Tired has a two bonus features that let us see Wanda on the fly. There is a Q&A period she holds after the show in Seattle, in which we see how lame the audience is, but more importantly, Wanda throws out some wit. There is also a quick clip of her radio interview at a Seattle radio station, which is less memorable.

Is this the best stand-up ever? No, but it's funny if you are not in the mood to watch something with a plot. Sykes is one of the funnier stand-up comics out there, so you could do worse. And you don't need to worry about not getting jokes because they are too ethnic; if anything, you just may not be smart enough or up enough on current events to catch everything. Wanda Sykes can cover even the lamest topic and find the humor in it; though when she starts a diatribe over which boob is the better of the two, well, that's really funny, too. I mean who doesn't laugh at a boob joke...