Search - Gallagher - The Best of Gallagher Volume 3 on DVD

How the mighty have fallen

Bruce Barker | NC | 05/18/2009

(1 out of 5 stars)

"When Gallagher first hit the scene he made a huge splash with a series of Showtime specials. Although most famous for his "Sledge-o-matic" routine in which he splattered the audience with watermelons and other assorted glop, at least 75% of his performance was observational humor. In these larger segments he revealed that he had a keen eye for irony that many of his critics simply overlooked.

Sadly, this collection is a self-produced and more recent batch of excerpts from a pair of his more recent shows. They reveal that this once gifted comic has become a very bitter and hateful individual. He spends much of the shows berating people in his audience and ranting about the stupidity of the American people in general. Although he has often bragged in interviews that he doesn't repeat himself, he uses several jokes multiple times on this dvd.

In addition, he's grown lazy. A fair amount of each concert is taken up with him "preparing" various mixtures in pie plates to lead up to the "sledge-o-matic" finale. And then, because he's apparently become too tired of his own signature routine, he brings people up out of the audience to smash the pie plates themselves while he stands off to the side and yells instructions.

I was once a huge fan of this comic and became so appalled at his total change of demeanor that I did a little web searching after viewing the DVD. I discovered that the recent years have been hard on Gallagher. He's become divorced, had a very bitter legal battle with his brother, and gotten sued several times for shoving audience members and staff at various performances. It's truly a shame that these events have taken a once extremely funny and quick-minded comedian and reduced him to a second-rate parody of himself. Don't waste your time on this garbage. Buy the first two "Best of" compilations instead so you can revel in the man that once was instead of the sad shadow he has apparently become."