In this documentary, filmmaker/gambling addict Brian Burkhardt introduces us to his friend/major source of disappointment, former stand-up comic Vinnie Favorito, whose star burned brightly until he lost it all by lying and cheating pretty much everyone he ever met.
In the 1990s and 2000s Vinnie was a rising star of the Las Vegas comedy scene, specialising in the “roast” or “insult comic” style, a stand-up subgenre which obviously requires quick thinking and big brass balls, traits which Vinnie demonstrates in abundance in the clips we see. We also get a series of talking heads assuring us that Vinnie is the funniest guy you’ll ever see. He’s so funny you’ll shit! This trait actually isn’t borne out by the selection of clips we see, but maybe you had to be there. I don’t know, a lot of the interviewees are themselves professional comedians so they presumably know what they’re talking about.
We’re also assured that Vinnie was some kind of master manipulator, that his genius for pushing people’s buttons as an insult comic translated into an ability to push buttons to wrangle money out of people. Perhaps that’s so, but the way Vinnie is billed as a fraudster, grifter or huckster – the film’s full title is Vinnie Plays Vegas: The Con Man of Comedy – belies the more prosaic reality. All he’s doing is hitting up friends to lend him money, gambling it away, and then not paying it back. A tragic story, and a frustrating one, but not a new or terribly interesting one. That’s just how gambling addicts do, y’know?
It becomes apparent at various points that Burkhardt is aware that this isn’t really much of a story. Though the film is only 85 minutes, we spend a good 3 of those, for example, being told what bankruptcy is; hardly specialised knowledge, that. And a great many of our talking heads are repeating each other. That’s natural, when so many of them are telling essentially the same story, for a number of them are actually victims of Vinnie’s, but we expect this sort of thing to be edited for cohesion. The best talking heads are: 1. a devout Christian who was quite aware what Vinnie was doing, but held out hope for Vin’s salvation; and Vinnie himself, who comes across as just as obnoxious as ever, despite his protestations of lessons learned.
The early part of the film suggests that, rather than a recap of Vinnie’s career and fall from grace, we’re going to follow him and his fellow Gambling Addicts Anonymous pals, which may well have made for a more compelling story. But abruptly, Burkhardt adopts a rather grating “comedy narrator” voice – we see in his talking-head segments that it isn’t his natural voice, or else I wouldn’t make fun of it – and presents us with this sadly ordinary doc.