Last modified on Tue 1 Jun 2021 15.46 EDT
Chris Gethardâs new film opens with the 40-year-old performing at 9am to a pancake-guzzling audience in Buffalo, New York. Truly, the life of a touring standup is not all glamour. Thatâs partly the point that Half My Life is making: it finds the New Jersey man revisiting a handful of his favourite venues, ruminating on life as a mid-career comedian, and pining for his wife and baby son back home. Between the scenes of this diary-cum-documentary, footage is spliced from the shows on the tour.
Itâs a diverting behind-the-scenes document of the peripatetic comicâs life â if not a particularly surprising one. We see Gethard and support act Carmen Christopher gridlocked on the interstate under lowering clouds, electric-scootering around Asbury Park, New Jersey, in the hours before showtime â then post-gig, posing for photos by the merch stall. None of it looks like the big time; Gethard jokes that he couldnât fill an arena if he tried. But then, he began life as a tyro punk comic, and if Half My Life conjures with Gethardâs career disillusion, it also advertises his fidelity to those roots.