| Kevin Stobo is a man who dwells in two professional worlds. He’s a stand-up comic and a film critic. When Stobo pulls those worlds together for his joke-laced movie reviews, seen on Shaw Cable and Global’s Inside Entertainment, the results are fresh, funny and unique.
Take his recent critique of the zebra-who-wants-to-be-a-racehorse film Racing Stripes. Stobo hilariously labelled it as "a movie with more creepy talking barnyard animals than you’d see at a Hunter S. Thompson party."
Then there was his introduction to a review of the current horror yarn Boogeyman. Stobo described the featured entity as "the scariest thing to come out of the closet since Rosie O’Donnell."
Now 31 years old, Stobo started performing stand-up at the age of 19, which is when he began to form his irreverent comedic style.
"I grew up watching all of those Evening at the Improv shows, SCTV, and admiring comedy as a kid," he says. "Pretty much as soon as I was legal and free to do amateur nights I was out there, because I would forever be kicking myself if I didn’t try it."
Like other veteran comics, Stobo has had his share of rough nights while performing live. One of his most memorable gigs-gone-wrong was a New Year’s Eve booking in a remote locale in the Northwest Territories.
"They flew me and another comic into this little mining community for like 300 guys who had been working non-stop in this mine," Stobo recalls. Just before he hit the stage, a company manager announced, "You might notice the bar is closed. That’s because we’re way behind on production, so we’re going to have to go right back to the mine when the comedy show is over. And now I’ll bring on our first comic…."
When Stobo made his entrance, he was greeted with the outraged catcalls of a legion of pissed-off miners. "That was the worst intro I ever got," he says.
These days, the Calgary funnyman is enjoying his role as a lighthearted alternative to serious movie critics. "My philosophy is I don’t know anything more about movies than the guy sitting beside me," he explains. "I just happen to have this really cool job where I get to say what I like about them. These guys who look deeply into movies and take it way too seriously amuse me, because the movies they say are great usually don’t do well at the box office and I think (movies are) mostly about entertainment."
But, like other critics, Stobo does tire of movie clichés and hackneyed plot devices. "In car-chase scenes you always know there’s going to be a fruit cart that gets knocked over," he says with a groan. "And in romantic comedies like The Wedding Date there’s always the thing where the guy drives away and you know he’s going to turn around and come back."
Stobo says he tries to come to each movie he reviews without prejudice. "Even before something like Superbabies: Baby Geniuses, I sat in the chair thinking, ‘OK, let’s see what this has to offer.’"
He pauses, then deadpans. "It, of course, had nothing to offer." |
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