Amy Schumer: Live at the Apollo

Sharply written and delivered with an acute self-awareness.

It recalls some of the better standup specials of the past decade. It hits on those R-rated topics she’s good at addressing and it lets her weigh in on the problems women face in Hollywood.

There are comics who inspire more raucous, helpless laughter, but no one has the audience so completely on her side.... During the second half, the focus swings to sex, and the notion--not new, but rarely conveyed this pungently and hilariously--that women enjoy it just as much as men.

Schumer’s delivery is confident and sometimes coy--her jokes about Oprah and the Obamas push the envelope--and she doesn’t bother with a Letterman-esque meta-commentary on jokes that don’t connect. But she also brings an intimacy into the hall, as she gets her audiences to lighten up and laugh at a few secret truths. She loves to play the bad girl, and she’s awfully good at it.

The hour, directed by Chris Rock, further cements her status as an all-medium power player. By turns coy, insecure, dramatic and challenging, Schumer has the flexibility to make her conversation both intimate and grandstanding.

What sets the comedian apart from her male and female counterparts is that she scores laughs mostly from saying the outrageous so matter-of-fact-ly, even sweetly. Nothing seems out of bounds to her, but she doesn’t go out of her way to find something offensive, either.

Schumer's impression of the personal trainer [is] a great routine, one that's matched only by a subsequent ode to semen (during which she does a priceless shout-out to Oprah Winfrey), as well as a climactic monologue about sexual positions that features some pretty uproarious audience participation. It's during these sections that Schumer's humor is most alive--truly transgressive in ways that confront, rather than winkingly tweak, the chauvinistic prejudices she's targeting. The rest is scattershot in the way of a very talented comic still honing both her points and her live-act presence.