Reviewed by Tina Briseno
The life of a stand-up comedian is a difficult one. While they make audiences laugh the foundation of every comic’s story is to often take painful events, find the humor in them and get up in front of a roomful of strangers and make them laugh. Now take that and make a film about the struggles of “making it” as a stand up comedians and a Latina stand-up to boot and now you have Kiki Melendez’s docu-comedy, Journey of a Female Comic currently playing at select AMC theaters (check list here).
While there have been a few docu-comedies, aside from Joan Rivers’, Kiki Melendez’s docu-comedy is the only other film that focuses on the woman comic. It’s about time we get a glimpse of the trajectory of a Latina female comic.
The docu-comedy Journey of a Female Comic could have easily been called Who is Kiki Melendez? You will find out straight from Kiki’s Hollywood. Kiki has been around and made the rounds in Hollywood as a radio DJ, actress, and stand up comedienne so she has a following which continues to grow thanks to her hit Showtime comedy show, garnering her tens of thousands of fans across the country. Kiki now hopes the film will get her name out there even more.
Director Erick A. Crespo has been able to weave a funny and often times bitter sweet look an the life of a Latina female comic and does so by piecing together clips of Kiki’s stand-up show, sketch scenes and testimonials. The result is a first time look into Latino stand up comics who, like Kiki, are just trying to break through the comic clutter whether it be in English…or even Spanish.
While the many celebrities in Journey of a Female Comic try to define just who Kiki is, the film also delves into the struggles of being Latino in Hollywood. Actor Esai Morales (Criminal Minds, La Bamba), who will soon be starring in HBO’s The Brink playing the President of the United States alongside Jack Black, breaks down the stereotypical Four “H” roles written for Latinos. He then breaks down the various Latinos accents and and personalities of Latinos. This alone is worth the price of the ticket and should be a requirement watching for ad agency executive who think all U.S. Latinos no matter if they are Puerto Ricans, Cubanos, Venezolano, Dominican they are all really Mexican.
Journey of a Female Comic is an independent production and may not have the polish of an HBO docu comedy but the audience at the screening I attended loved it as I did. It is a universal story of survival produced and funded by friends, family and investors who believed it was time to finally tell the story of the Latina female comic and finally answer the question of “Who is Kiki Melendez?” in a most entertainment way.
Cast: Kiki Melendez, Edward James Olmos, Esai Morales, Nadine Velazquez, Jacob Vargas, Maria Conchita Alonso.
Journey of A Female Comic was produced by Melendez’s Latin Hollywood Films in association with Lions Kill Productions. It is produced and directed by Erick M. Crespo and Kiki Melendez, written by Lyn McCullough and Kiki Melendez. Executive Producers are David Albert Pierce, Mark Ford, Paul Lawrence, Gloria Ortiz, Vickie Leyva and Mike Levy.
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