The formerly neat, gentle world of late-night TV starts to blur and become cruel as Ralph realizes that his parents’ marriage is falling apart. VHYES is a story about a child reckoning with his parents’ divorce. They all nail the transition from standard TV programming to increasingly discomfiting chaos.Īs the clips alternate with footage from Ralph’s life, hanging out with his mother (Christian Drerup) or his best friend Josh (Rahm Braslaw), it gradually becomes clear that everything is connected. Kerri Kenney ( Reno! 911) plays the Bob Ross-esque figure, Thomas Lennon (also of Reno! 911) plays one of the shopping-channel hosts, and Mark Proksch (the What We Do in the Shadows series, Better Call Saul) plays the appraiser. The bits and pieces are perfectly strange, and they feature some of the best comedians currently working. The shopping-channel hosts begin shilling for objects they claim are for regular use around the house, but are clearly drug paraphernalia. But they all come with twists: the painter in the tutorial show includes a segment meant to help viewers sleep, in which she simply stares into the camera, waiting for the audience to nod off. The film is meant to be the result: a mixture of footage from the wedding, Ralph’s recordings of life around the house, and various programs taped off TV.Įach TV-show bit parodies a familiar bit of TV lore, from Bob Ross’ painting tutorials to Antiques Roadshow. Young Ralph (Mason McNulty) has a new video camera, and he’s used it to tape over his parents’ wedding VHS.
Instead of trying to stretch out one sketch to feature length, Robbins packs his film full of sketches that seem unrelated, until they coalesce into a single story.Ĭartoon Network’s Adult Swim has thrived on weird sketch comedy, with programs like Robot Chicken and Tim and Eric Awesome Show, Great Job! VHYES initially feels like an extended episode of a similar series. Jack Henry Robbins’ VHYES beats the system by approaching the idea of a sketch movie from the opposite direction. Clunky sketch-derived movies like A Night at the Roxbury, Coneheads, and Superstar just prove the point what was funny for four or five minutes feels like flogging a dead horse at feature length.
So sketches generally haven’t fared well when they’re transformed into feature films.
Sketches tend to be a few minutes long, featuring self-contained stories and characters they’re meant to be brief, never pushing a joke past the point where it’s still funny. By definition, sketch comedy is short-form.
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