The Good

Packed with extras and laughs one would be hard pressed not to find this entertaining.

The Bad

Sometimes it seems aspects of this show shouldn't have been carried out as long as they were.

Dane Cook's Tourgasm is a 30 day, comic, traveling tour/roadshow that features Cook and pals Gary Gulman, Jay Davis and Robert Bobby Kelly. During the course of the tour they go to 20 college campuses and perform in front of sold out crowds. As funny as all of this stuff is, Cook and Co. have decided to document their antics on the road as they are making this trip in a large bus like a band might. We see them get on one another's nerves, trade war stories about girls, farts and whatever else they can think of.

This show aired on HBO as a nine-part half-hour series. I didn't catch it when it was on but I think what they have put together is somewhat unique. It was different than Spike Lee's The Original Kings of Comedy in that these guys are all pretty much upstarts. They have been performing for awhile but this game is new to them in certain regards. All in all, it was filled with laughs and interesting moments that any fan of these guys should find interesting, enlightening and even worth owning.

Features

Audio Commentary by Dane and the Boys

How can you not watch this? With all of the people involved in this movie in one room, at times it was a bit hard keeping up with everything that was being said. In my humble opinion, that is is exactly how this should've been. Had these guys tried to play it too straight or been overly serious about their craft, that most likely would have made things rather tepid. I don't usually say this but having them all in the room provided a nice continuation of what we were treated to on screen. They laugh at their jokes, their performances, themselves, and just about everything as they have a good ole time looking back at what they did together.

Tourgasm Montages

Multiple Tourgasm b>Two Behind-the-Scenes Featurettes

These were cool but they seemed like longer extensions of the show that might have been better just being in the shows themselves. The Multiple Tourgasm Shorts play like mobile content pieces which is what I think they were. As I was watching them it took me a few moments to get oriented but once I did, everything played fine. I just can't imagine watching these sorts of things on my cellphone. The Two Behind-the-Scenes Featurettes were essentially more of the same with the difference being that they played a bit longer. Again, I think it's hard to have extra features stand out on a Reality TV-type release but I give HBO Home Video credit for trying.

Video

Aspect Ratio - 1.66:1. Presented in Widescreen, the 9 episodes that comprise this set look pretty good. Edited like a typical reality show, they are filled with enough quick cuts to move each story forward without dwelling in any one area any longer than is necessary. Things are presented in a pretty straight forward way and there didn't really seem to be a need for the editors of this show to spice things up too much. They certainly don't but this three disc set is nothing if not fluid. On top of this, the DVDs have been compressed quite nicely here. I saw no dirt or hits on any portion of the video's picture.

Audio

English - Dolby Digital 2.0. The audio on these discs were fine. I often say this but I think it's true, this is a comedy show we're talking about, the sound should be as perfectly pristine as possible. It is good here. There was nothing that knocked me out or made me feel like I had shortchanged myself watching it on my regular TV system. The audio played without any incident. I didn't hear any points where things got overly low and I didn't have to turn up the volume on my tiny TV set that high either.

Package

Dane Cook, looking very hip with spiky hair, stands with his three buddies and their tour bus in the background on this front cover. The back cover continues this artwork and we also get a well written description of what this DVD set is about, a Special Features listing, a cast list (of sorts) and some system specs. All three DVDs seem to be packed in here nicely, with artwork that contains images reminiscent of the front cover that houses everything. There isn't anything that great but fans of these comics should get a kick out of how this packaging has been laid out.

Final Word

Having only seen Dane Cook in the Comedy Central show Windy City Heat, I was actually surprised to see him how he was here. In that movie, which is essentially a feature length version of Punk'd, Cook has to play a straight man with a bunch of other straight-men, as a trick is being played on a man named Perry (He thinks he's the star of a movie). Dane Cook is very low key and at times seems to even be covering his mouth with laughter. Seeing him as part of Dane Cook's Tourgasm (he is the ringleader as well as a comedian), it is almost a complete 180 from how I was used to seeing him.

He and all of the comics play very well off one another. Truthfully, I hadn't heard of any of them before this tour. Also, there doesn't seem like there was a lot of ego on the part of Cook who, lets be honest, without his presence this tour most likely would not exist. There are a lot of laughs to be had when watching Dane Cook's Tourgasm. As I mentioned, Cook, Gulman, Davis and Kelly all have their own styles that compliment one another. Where one does slice of life humor, another will tell jokes that follow a more common and traditional format. What this DVD set does do is give us a nice thumbnail sketch of a portion of the state of comedy in America Today.