Hot In Hawaii
Filipino-American comic Jo Koy returns with another Netflix special, aptly titled Comin’ In Hot. With a variety of different accents and some topical stereotypical humour, Jo Koy delivers a fresh hour of comedy, building on the success of what’s come before. While I personally found the first half to be stronger than the second, there’s enough here to enjoy if you’ve taken to Jo Koy’s previous material before. We begin with Jo introducing himself to the Hawaiian audience, firing off a variety of surprisingly accurate accents. After discussing the significance of vowels in the Hawaiian language, he goes on to talk about various different accents including the Korean “weed smokers” and Mexican’s intonation, sounding like someone “falling off a cliff”. There’s some nice interactions with the audience here too, as he fires off-the-cuff observational comedy and helps engage the audience with the various jokes. From here, Jo discusses his childhood, including lunchboxes and his Mum as well as trading food and the kid at lunch who pays with a debit card. All of this revolves round to Asian households again, including jokes about rice cookers and the trials and tribulations of raising a teenage son. The rest of the stand-up then revolves around his son and a more crude-style of comedy, discussing penis sizes and sex before cleverly tying it all together with the topic of stereotypes again, through talking to Malcolm in the front row. Despite the descent into a more crude-style of shock humour here, the way Jo ties this back in to the earlier material is actually pretty good and certainly shows some self-awareness to tie everything together in a cohesive way. While I found the stand-up to tail off a little around the midway point, there’s enough here to make for a funny stand-up nonetheless. The accents early on had me genuinely laughing out loud and a few of the clever quips dotted throughout the show help keep the pacing consistent and moving along at a steady rate. Of course, if you weren’t a fan of Jo’s earlier material this is unlikely to sway your opinion either. Some of the jokes don’t always land and a few reminders to the audience to tell them it’s just a joke does dampen the experience a little. Having said all that though, Jo Koy delivers another pretty good stand up routine that’s at its hottest early on. While some of the sparkle does tail off toward the end, the material early on more than makes up for it. The various audience interactions are great and if I’m honest, I wish there were more of them. These moments are really good and help engage the audience through some of the longer stories. It’s not perfect and at times it does feel a little overlong, but there’s enough here to make for a stand up comedy worth checking out nonetheless.
