All Rise...

Judge Adam Arseneau... says you could be... reading this DVD review... right now...

The Charge

"It is as if Michelangelo sculpted you by hand, and then kept you for himself…in a closet…to visit on lonely nights…Would you care for a glass of cham-pag-nay?"

The Case

God, this DVD broke my heart. In theory, this should be the best purchase that one could ever make. I mean, the best of Christopher Walken on Saturday Night Live? How could you not be out there, buying this DVD, right now?

The problem with this DVD, as with all these SNL sets, is they tend to emphasize newer material over older, funnier, classic material. With all the funny stuff Christopher Walken did on this show, how could they load a DVD up with such terrible crap? Even I could have done better. If you had given me all the episodes of "The Continental," and a montage of all the impressions that people have done of Christopher Walken on SNL, I could have died a happy man. As it is, this DVD still makes me want to die…just not happily.

Admittedly, it isn't all bad; this DVD does feature a small offering of the classic Walken performances, like two episodes of The Continental, Bruce Dickinson and the Blue Oyster Cult recording session (better known as "the cowbell sketch"), and Ed Glosser: Trivial Psychic, a personal favorite. But this material amounts to a mere ten or fifteen minutes of sketch time, and the rest of the DVD just goes on, and on, and on, getting less funny with every passing minute. Whoever put this DVD together should be fired, because this is simply disgraceful. And at the summit of Mount Unfunny, we find the abhorrent Colonel Angus skit (say it with a southern drawl to make instant "funny"). That skit could very well be the worst piece of crap that SNL has ever came up with in its entire history. Gee, glad I've got that on DVD now.

Video and sound quality are on par with previous SNL DVD releases, and present the show in better-than-broadcast quality, but nothing to get excited about. A few extras are tossed onto the DVD for good measure. We get a third "Continental" episode in the way of a special "making-of" featurette, utilizing a split-screen effect to let us see how the skit comes together from the camera's perspective and from the audience's perspective. It would be a lot cooler if the particular "Continental" episode chosen weren't so terrible. We also get two dress rehearsal skits that never made the final cut…Chris as a New York tough, trenchcoat wearing Angel, and as Fonzie in a Milos Forman cinematic experience. It goes to show you that whoever runs SNL obviously have no idea about funny, as these deleted sketches are funnier than most of the crap on this DVD.

With the exception of Steve Martin and Jerry Seinfeld, only Christopher Walken gets the honor of having his own "Best Of" DVD, and it breaks my Walken-loving heart to see how bad this DVD came out. The Best of Christopher Walken reminds me why I haven't watched Saturday Night Live in years. The show is freaking terrible nowadays, and even the masterful Christopher Walken cannot rescue even half these skits from absolute disaster.

I got nothing more to say about this crap. We needed more cowbell…and we got Colonel Angus instead?

The horror.

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