Aunty Donnas Big Ol House of Fun Review
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Netflix's Aunty Donna'southward Large Ol' House of Fun is Sketch Comedy Bliss
Netflix's Aunty Donna'southward Large Ol' House of Fun is Sketch Comedy Bliss
When sketch comedy finds a wide audience, it's like lightning in a canteen. Think of how The Alone Isle used to dominate "Sabbatum Night Live" with their digital shorts, or how Tim Robinson made a cult Netflix hit out of his 2019 serial, "I Think You Should Get out." Netflix seeks to replicate some of Robinson'south meme-able success with its extremely funny new sketch show "Aunty Donna'southward Large Ol' House of Fun," starring the Aussie trio Aunty Donna (Mark Samual Bonanno, Broden Kelly, and Zachary Ruane). They've been making absurdist comedy for years (along with series manager Max Miller), and care for the premise here of three roommates living together as a wall-breaking, dimension-diving, musical free-for-all for their immense satirical and comic energy.
Here is a testify particularly befitting its year of release. The dialogue is merely an interlude for the screaming or the sociopathic faces trying to have fun with whatever is nearby ("Everything's a drum!" the bizarre opening song goes, every bit they blindside on everything in their candy-colored domicile), and no premise is as elementary equally information technology initially looks. Something unhinged is inevitably going to happen to break the very reality of the sketch; satire will collide with meta references and/or general freak outs; an existential crunch is nearby. Delivered with such forceful energy (this show is e'er "on") and an incredible amount of creativity (information technology'due south nigh always funny), "Aunty Donna'due south Big Ol' House of Fun" is the sketch series for this year, and its madness is a beatific escape from our current reality.
Each episode gets a premise from its "word of the day" (like "Treasure") and that feels to be like a nod to "Pee-Wee's Playhouse," admitting from three comedians who could easily host their own off-kilter children's testify if they wanted. Working every bit a trio who tin alter their characters in an instant, they make for an encouraging agglomeration to follow effectually in plots the series only uses for some type of gravity. Satire becomes the single tether that keeps the humor just barely grounded (there's even a bit most things that are "relatable," as they very much are here in this show's absurdist fashion), and the series has many recognizable jokes. If you squint actress hard, it's still a show about simply having fun with your roommates, and that's a mighty warming approach itself.
The series has been devised with a creative abandon similar Bob Odenkirk and David Cross' "Mr. Testify," as one sketch is built from the previous under some semblance of a story. "Aunty Donna's Big Ol House of Fun" relishes any fourth dimension information technology can tear open the reality of its segment, and it creates an unpredictability that feels free from the stagnation of a unproblematic premise you might see in a iv-infinitesimal sketch video. Somehow an episode nearly a treasure map leads to executive producer Ed Helms having an identity crisis, to a special prize from Ellen Degeneres, to traveling through a vortex, to throwing around a crimson ball with Abraham Lincoln in the studio backlot. In the world of "Aunty Donna," it makes sense.
In the game of empty-headed comedy being hitting-and-miss, it'southward the segments (like trailers) that fabricated me laugh the least, even if I recognized what they were satirizing, and appreciated how information technology resembled Kentucky Fried Theater'due south own "Kentucky Fried Moving picture." But the energy of "Aunty Donna's Big Ol' House of Fun" is such that if one joke isn't working for you, the sketch volition shortly exist moving onto something else entirely dissimilar, while still riffing on its general premise (whether it's finding a new roommate, going on a date) in a way that you tin can't predict.
In the cease, trying to recommend something as unabashedly silly as this feels like explaining the scientific discipline of an inside joke. But I can say that it'due south very much worth the fourth dimension for anyone who has previous sketch one-act jokes lodged deep in their brains (such every bit myself with Derrick Comedy and The Solitary Isle in my formative past). At the very least, it has the makings of something that I immediately wanted more than of, especially to see such sense of humour, and creativity, among such chaos.
Whole series screened for review. Now available on Netflix.
Nick Allen
Nick Allen is the Senior Editor at RogerEbert.com and a member of the Chicago Film Critics Association.
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Source: https://www.rogerebert.com/streaming/netflixs-aunty-donnas-big-ol-house-of-fun-is-sketch-comedy-bliss
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