Kevin James: Irregardless is a brand-new stand-up special by the titular actor and comic, produced by Amazon Studios. The standup special was released on January 23, 2024, and it was directed by Kevin himself. This one-hour set is all about Kevin and his family and the issues faced by his kids, who are from the current generation and seem to live a different kind of existence.
The sixty-minute set on his family includes his four children and his lawfully wedded wife, as well as the issues he faces while communicating with them. The show began with a goofy dance of his, which was to prove a point about his age and health. There is a stretched-out set on him being pre-diabetic, and his physician could have requested him to begin a strict diet. Sadly, the entire gag felt like a rant on how physicians should come clean instead of creating fear and letting the patient stick to that awful cycle.
There is some self-deprecating humor added to this. Kevin accuses himself of being in that age group that needs to take their physical health seriously, but the slapstick nature of his jokes coupled with loud, exaggerated tales does not form a proper set. The whole one hour of Kevin James’ set is noise. There is no humor present because of his high-decibel gags. If one has seen Gilmore Girls, they would know Lorelai’s humor was an exaggerated scenario as a part of her comic routine. Kevin James tried to use this form of comedy throughout his set but sadly, there was no originality.
Kevin James speaks about wanting to be the one who decides how he should pass and not let his children, wife, or doctors be given the power to do the same. The set was based on the news he came across of a person who gained consciousness after having been unplugged from the life support system. There are parts in the show where Kevin James stutters to finish the sentence, probably because he could hardly find material to keep the joke going. Since Kevin James is an American comic, the relatability factor for audiences outside of the country is reduced by many folds.
The whole idea of releasing these stand-up clips on international platforms like Amazon Prime is to increase the reach and let the world be introduced to many off-beat comics like Kevin James. He is more popular as a Hollywood actor than as a standup comic outside of America.
This set would have allowed the world to see him as a standup comic who has a grip over his material and writing. Sadly, there’s no part of his set that would leave you genuinely wanting to laugh, and it is sad that an actor and comedian of his stature ran out of content to talk about. There was a whole set on ‘back in the day’ how his generation was raised and how the kids of the current generation are not being beaten enough to understand life in general.
This sends the wrong message, as he completely disregards the trauma that comes from having a difficult childhood while living with an abusive or emotionally distant parent, something that might need years of therapy as well. To disregard the repercussions of parenting to the point of being in denial of their child’s pain is wrong. Kevin James went on, and the set spiraled into a space where none of his ‘back-in-the-day’ humor worked.
There was an entire subplot in his set about his children not being in touch with reality and his son wanting a virtual reality headset, and nothing led to a chuckle or laughter. It lacked simplicity, which is the base of every set. If the story is presented in a simpler form instead of going through a rant, it would generate good laughs. The whole point of a stand-up special is to make sure the audience watching the set from close quarters and the viewers enjoying it from the comfort of their homes can have a good laugh over a relatable matter. The premise about a kid’s game that does not keep scores anymore to avoid younglings suffering from heartbreak and loss seems to have taken inspiration from a subplot of a How I Met Your Mother episode.
The last part of the set involved Kevin James talking about his daily musings with his wife, which is a cliched subject to touch upon. A lot of the humor in the last bit is tried and tested, and after a point, the wife jokes are just purely regressive. It is high time married men went beyond making jokes about wives and husbands having two different ways to communicate with each other. Such outdated forms of humor only make Kevin James come across as someone who has probably not moved forward to understand how any relationship between a man and woman works, especially in a marriage. Kevin James seems like an old man trying to regain his foothold using age-old humor, but sadly, none of that worked in his favor.
Overall, Kevin James: Irregardless does not touch upon anything important, and there is a lot of polishing that could have been done before presenting it to the audience. The jokes about food products with low cholesterol, Siri, and other growing technology did not work because these subjects have been a part of many stand-up routines. This Prime Video original stand-up special did not work for many reasons.
