Jon Lovitz @ Levity Live, Nyack, NY
Live Reviews | Oct 21st, 2013
Date: Thursday October 17th 2013
Venue Link: www.levitylive.com
Jon Lovitz is probably best known for his stint as a cast member of Saturday Night Live (1985-1990). In recent years he has went from frequent appearances in ‘The Simpsons’ (Artie Ziff, Professor Lombardo, Ms. Sinclair) to a semi- regular in Adam Sandler Movies such as ‘Eight Crazy Nights’, ‘Little Nicky’, ‘The Wedding Singer’ and ‘Grown Ups 2’.
On October 17th and 18th Jon Lovitz came to the wonderful Levity Live comedy club at the Palisades Shopping Center in Rockland County for 4 shows of his stand-up material. And while none of his most famous characters from SNL made an appearance he did entertain the near capacity Audience for 80 minutes. Lovitz came on stage at 10.30pm (following an earlier 7.30pm show). He has the type of face and voice that make me laugh, i mean just the SIGHT and SOUND of him, not necessarily the material so i knew i’d at least laugh at that.
Lovitzs’ actual material was self-deprecating and silly, non-offensive stuff for the most part. He did a piece on the Octo-Mom which went on a little too long but still got the laughs. Lovitz certainly comes off as likeable on stage too, and seems like a genuine nice guy but the thing that really disappointed me (and drew a few raised eyebrows from some people around my table) and where i lost a little respect for him was when he went were no comedian should EVER go, certainly not a professional, former SNL cast member (and owner of a comedy club in Los Angeles himself!) and actually used someone else’s material, and more than once. The most obvious line was the classic joke about borrowing $50- ‘The Jewish Boy asks his dad for 50 Dollars , his father says “Forty Dollars? What do you need Thirty Dollars For”? Yeah, he actually used that joke. The audience didn’t seem to mind though, and lapped it up!
Lovitz wrapped up the show by inviting questions from the audience, the funniest being his reply when someone asked him when he will be back doing TV again to which he replied “I’m on now, remember?!!” Lovitz had already said earlier in the show that he was on a new TV show called ‘Mr. Box Office’. He then finished up with some comedy songs on the keyboard, with the subject of most of those songs aimed at Comedian Bob Sagets sexuality for the most part. It ended with a singalong to a ‘re-worked’ version of The Beatles ‘Hey Jude’.
All in all it was an entertaining show and everybody seemed to leave happy.
