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CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION | ||
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Positive:
0
Mixed:
6
Negative:
3
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Critic Reviews
Sep 24, 2024
Season 1 Review:
DeGeneres still has the chops as a shrewd observational comedian, but can she effectively chop away at her own mystique? Yes and no. .... While she gets sizable laughs making fun of men for getting away with making ridiculous public scenes by playing air guitar or imagining their golf swings, DeGeneres gets far less mileage with more shallow thoughts about somehow not knowing what it means to be in charge.
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Sep 24, 2024
Season 1 Review:
It's a messy, revealing self-portrait whose feathery jokes mask a heavier tone. .... In her standup, she comes across as a more paradoxical figure: calm but neurotic, cheerful but also haunted, ordinary pal and alien superstar. What anchors her is trusty comic instincts and timing. She's at her best leaning into her prickliness.
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Sep 26, 2024
Season 1 Review:
By the time DeGeneres walks onstage, home viewers may already have a sense that she’s looking for sympathy more than laughs. The comedian may joke about her expulsion from Hollywood, but it’s clear how hurt she feels. And when it comes to owning her mistakes, DeGeneres struggles to find the humor.
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Sep 25, 2024
Season 1 Review:
The jokes about aging are mildly funny (on her osteoporosis: “I don’t even know how I’m standing up right now. I’m like a human sandcastle—I could disintegrate in the shower”). But they would be funnier if they didn’t feel like a ploy for sympathy, culminating in a saccharine speech about how she is no longer “a boss or a brand” but “a multifaceted person” who is honest and generous, but also tough and demanding.
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Sep 25, 2024
Season 1 Review:
DeGeneres doesn’t have much to say in For Your Approval, other than a limp plea for the public’s adoration. At least there would be something compelling to write about if she’d doubled down on an asshole persona. Instead, we’re left with a wishy-washy hour that asks us to care about DeGeneres again, without giving us any reason to in the first place.
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Sep 24, 2024
Season 1 Review:
DeGeneres is on steadiest ground in this special when discussing the universally relatable. .... But to allude to having been maltreated and “thrown out of show business” while dancing around what exactly happened on her set requires both nimbleness and a bit of nerve. “For Your Approval” is, in the end, a frustrating watch, and a bum note to go out on.
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Sep 30, 2024
Season 1 Review:
When she isn’t addressing the elephant in the room—and her version is definitely a cute Dumbo of a pachyderm rather than a rampaging wild beast—the humor is so gentle it’s positively anemic. .... For DeGeneres to liken her failure to provide a safe and equitable work environment with homophobia and ageism displays an astonishing lack of understanding. And it certainly isn’t funny.
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Sep 25, 2024
Season 1 Review:
If Ellen still cares what we think, her 70 minutes of standup might have been better spent by actually grappling with her peccadilloes, rather than using them to fan the flames of her own ego. While she tries to convince us that she's self-salvaged her reputation by caring just the right amount (which, by her definition, means not at all), "For Your Approval" seems to plead with its audience for exactly that.
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Sep 24, 2024
Season 1 Review:
The problem with For Your Approval, aside from the fact that it is almost never funny, is that it feels so disingenuous, so calculated to rehabilitate an image and preserve that triumph for posterity. It’s less a comedy special, the best of which arrive at humor through honest insights, than a stump speech.
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