jokes

You are currently browsing articles tagged jokes.

Law revue terrible

13 Sep 2008 in Law, University by Enoch Lau | No comments

“Should I care? Should I care?”

If the ques­tion is about the Sydney Law Revue 2008, the answer is no. (The quote is from the “Hold­ing out for a US Hero” skit, the clos­ing skit.)

Last year, I wrote about the half-​​executed jokes that had the poten­tial to be so much fun­nier. I wish I could make a sim­ilar com­ment this year. This time round, the dir­ect­ors some­how found it con­veni­ent to expend entirely with the punch­lines in jokes. Instead, it was replaced with flat, mean­ing­less drivel so that when it got to the clos­ing, I was pretty much clap­ping out of polite­ness instead of sin­cere appreciation.

The occa­sional joke made in bad taste is to be expec­ted in a revue; in fact, you could say it defines a revue. Nor­mally, I’d have a good laugh at them. But given that the rest of the revue was so flat, when the (bad) jokes came around, the audi­ence just didn’t buy them. We even had a heck­ler in the audi­ence – and I pretty much agreed with everything he had to shout out. At one stage, one of the back­stage mem­bers stuffed up with the mop between skits; that was almost one of the fun­ni­est moments (!).

China, with its astro­nom­ical growth and the Beijing Olympics just past, was an obvi­ous top­ical sub­ject. They didn’t fail to deliver on that count, but the jokes were so poorly delivered that they might have been mis­taken for blatant racism.

To regain the con­fid­ence of its audi­ence, the Law Revue in future years needs to cre­ate a coher­ent present­a­tion that car­ries some kind of energy through­out the per­form­ance. A little bit of intro­spec­tion might help; I’m sure if the dir­ect­ors actu­ally sat down and listened to some of their own jokes, they might agree that they weren’t quite so funny after all. There was no doubt some great tal­ent on stage; whether this tal­ent was used most effect­ively is another question.

Tags: , , , , ,

Law revue: shred the lame jokes please

17 Aug 2007 in Goings-on, Law by Enoch Lau | No comments

The singing, dan­cing extra­vag­anza that is the SULS Law Revue is back in town, and judging from pre­vi­ous years, this was one revue that I couldn’t miss. (I’ve also been miss­ing my daily dose of law while doing hon­ours, so I just had to go!) I still recall last year’s French Hakka, and the oh-​​so-​​wrong Kirby sing-​​and-​​dance – and both of these left me with high expect­a­tions about what my peers can do (while dressed and undressed).

Shred – the greatest story in lit­ig­a­tion ever told – star­ted with the cast telling us about Aus­tralian val­ues in lyr­ical fash­ion. I had hoped for some­thing about Shrek, or even some­thing about Shred, but no, we didn’t get any­thing related to the title this year apart from a mal­func­tion­ing fax machine that hap­pens to eat doc­u­ments later on. The first half of the revue was a bit flat I thought. As many com­men­ted, the ideas behind the skits and the jokes were fant­astic, but the exe­cu­tion was lack­ing: the jokes cli­maxed at the start or in the middle, the punch-​​lines often lack­ing. The songs were premised on what could’ve been really great ideas, but the words in them just didn’t carry the amuse­ment through­out. Law stu­dents are said to be left while at uni, and right when they start work­ing, but the Lib­eral horse was flogged well bey­ond death dur­ing the show.

I guess they saved the best till last, for the second half almost made up for what was lack­ing in the first. The anti-​​piracy video (a par­ody of the ones you see before movies) was so hil­ari­ous (“copy­right is… a chose in action”), but accord­ing to Daniel, the idea was copied from the UQ law revue. We heard a song about the snail in the ginger beer bottle from Donoghue v Steven­son, and the Face­book prayer (“deliver us from MySpace”). Back­yard Blitzkrieg trans­formed back­yards and Hitler’s words to great effect. Oh, and the nude scene… a tra­di­tion, but the best I can say about it is that it has poten­tial to be worked a little deeper. The end­ing was a sav­ing grace though: the APEC song (to the tune of YMCA) was well writ­ten and car­ried the joke throughout.

I’d have to say that this year’s wasn’t the best Law Revue I’ve seen, but as the Dir­ector noted in the offi­cial pro­gramme, this year saw the depar­ture of much of the tal­ent from last year. I expect the lame, tacky or tact­less joke or two in a revue, but as with all jokes, tim­ing is of the essence. If the bet­ter skits are any­thing to go by, we should have plenty to laugh ourselves silly in com­ing years. Still, the law revue is a qual­ity pro­duc­tion, and a night well spent – I’d recom­men­ded see­ing it.

Tags: , , , , , , , , ,