‘Pete Holmes: Faces and Sounds’ Is Funny, Even Joyous
Pete Holmes is such a likable comedian, he can get applause when he tells a joke and then says immediately, “That joke never works.” He is happy to admit his weaknesses and flaws. In fact, Holmes is happy, period. Working in an industry populated largely by performers who frequently seem to be working through their neurotic, rage-filled offstage life, Holmes — whose new standup special Faces and Sounds, taped in Chicago, premieres Friday night — is engagingly cheerful.
Holmes talks about maintaining your “joy quota” and offers suggestions on how to deal with people who steal your parking space in crowded mall parking lots without resorting to lava-hot rage. He says, “I don’t know how to be mad” and then offers some fine examples of his being unable to express anger in a sufficiently direct way in real life.
A mop-haired, slightly blobby figure (boy, am I glad I Googled “Pete Holmes” and “John Ritter” before I made what I thought would be a brilliantly original physical comparison), Holmes comes across as an ordinary man who’s most interested in seeing what he has in common with his audiences. There are moments when he does it in a comically self-conscious way — “Sometimes I get scared — is that a relatable premise?” — and at other times, he just springs one on you, as when he announces that one of his new goals is to “understand the trumpet — not play it, just understand it.” He gets a good two minutes of comedy out of that.
Holmes works in a variety of standup modes: observational humor (a good new flying-in-an-airplane joke is hard to come up with, but he does); autobiographical material (his bit about attending an Enrique Iglesias concert initially seems not believable, but by the end, I bought it completely); and just plain physical humor, distorting his mouth, scrunching his eyes, contorting his body, and emitting quirky yelps. Not for nothing is his special called Faces and Sounds. Holmes (who also stars in HBO’s upcoming comedy Crashing) says at one point, “Comedy doesn’t have to be art,” but at his best, he makes art out of his own steady artlessness.
Pete Holmes: Faces and Sounds airs Friday night at 10 p.m. on HBO.
