Andrew Santino: Cheeseburger review: Uninspired standup lives up to its titular metaphor

Andrew Santino’s latest Netflix standup, ‘Cheeseburger’ sees the comic goof on topics ranging from COVID-19 to global warming and politics.

Story

Andrew Santino comes on stage and greets a roaring and cheering audience at the venue in Denver, Colorado.

The comic starts off the act with jokes on the pandemic and the varied public attitudes towards the Coronavirus disease. Then he segues into the topic of sex injuries and the embarrassment of having to experience an ER visit because of it.

Santino goes on to do jokes about the toxic and insecure masculinity he saw growing up and the taboo around masturbation that tormented him, thanks to Catholicism.

Thereafter, he jokes about Jesus being homosexual and then about Global warming, the discourse around it, and Greta Thunberg’s alleged Nazi-adjacent accent.

Following that, he riffs on the parallel between Donald Trump and Joe Biden, and then a “classic” routine on the differences between what men and women can and can not do.

Santino ends the special with a fake story about a girl with down syndrome having a bad encounter with his dog, harping on the audience about their preconceived notion of the girl’s race.

Positives

The silliest stuff in Andrew Santino’s ‘Cheeseburger’ is the best part about an otherwise incredibly mediocre standup.

While not overtly animated, Santino does have a talent for pulling off great vocal and physical impressions of inanimate objects.

Negatives

Even when mucking about the conservative and dated masculine notions about physical affection, Santino isn’t saying anything remotely new or groundbreaking.

The comic sort of washes his hands off this drawback by going ahead and branding his own special as trivial, facetious, and transient.

He doesn’t want to leave a legacy like other comedy heavyweights, he just wants people to have fun in the present, taking them for a fun little forgettable experience — like eating a cheeseburger.

And this metaphor works great for this standup, which essentially feels like fast food but for comedy, or a new Marvel movie without the budget.

Verdict

Santino’s ‘Cheeseburger’ is a self-aware little ride full of jokes already made a million times by his own contemporaries, with nothing of weight to say, and little hilarity to inspire.

---

Also Read: White Noise review: Absurdist comedy never quite hits the mark