Vince Vaughn’s Wild West Comedy Show: Backstage Bits Outshine Those in the Spotlight

 

Even at 100 minutes, this documentary about Vaughn and pals' 2005 bus tour from L.A. to Chicago (and all points in between, oy) plays a little long—mostly due to the "comedy show" part, which is filled with such antiquated bits as "Starbucks customers order the damnedest things," "dudes who show off their iPods in the gym are douche-bags," and "techno music's for tone-deaf stoners." Echoing the far-more-successful Comedians of Comedy, Ari Sandel's backstage-diving doc showcases the grind of life on the road. Only, Vaughn's fab foursome—amiable irritant John Caparulo, nostalgic Bret Ernst, would-be waiter Sebastian Maniscalco, and proud Muslim Ahmed Ahmed—are thrilled to be along for the ride. The doc provides plenty of backstory (meeting the comics' families offers generous context to material heard earlier in the film). But in the end, it's the bits involving Vaughn and his celeb guests that linger, chief among them two re-enactments—one during which Justin Long reads Vaughn's part from Swingers with Jon Favreau, and the other in which Vaughn re-enacts his part from a 1991 CBS Schoolbreak Special about steroid use with his actual co-star, A Christmas Story's all-growed-up Peter Billingsley. Also on hand: Dwight Yoakam, Buck Owens, and Keir O'Donnell—or, as he's always referred to, "the gay guy" from Wedding Crashers.