The Under 700 Club: Nate Bargatze: Hello World (2023)

Nate's latest stand-up special shows what he does best.

Amazon Prime

The Under 700 Club: Reviews in under 700 words for movies with less than 700 logs on Letterboxd (log count as of this publication: 228)

This is only the second edition of The Under 700 Club and I'm already cheating a tad. There aren't rules or anything here, but this column is clearly designed to highlight films that haven't gotten a ton of love. Today is about a stand-up special, not a movie, and yes it has less than 700 logs on Letterboxd, but that's because it's both not a movie and has only been out for 48 hours. By the time you open this one up in your inbox, it may have already cleared that mark. 

But damn it, I just wanted to talk about it.

I love stand-up. I've been a disciple from an early age, memorizing George Carlin and Brian Regan and Dave Chappelle albums that I downloaded on my iPod Shuffle. I used to fall asleep to stand-up stations on Pandora, (sorry Taylor!) This is where I discovered Nate Bargatze's first album, Yelled at by a Clown. I have loved his work ever since.

But I'm a bad stand-up fan because I rarely ever put my money where my mouth is. It's been hard for me to justify premium theatre ticket pricing for something that will come my way for free on Netflix or Spotify or YouTube a while later. When Nate came through our city in March of 2020, I didn't buy tickets. When his Friday the 13th show got canceled for obvious reasons, the new October date ended up being bullshit and the show finally landed on a makeup date in October of 2021. Desperate for some live entertainment after 18 months of lockdown and an offer we couldn't refuse on Facebook Marketplace, we saw Nate on his third attempt to come through town. 

This is the 60 minutes we saw.

Obviously, a lot has changed, some wording, some punchlines, some tempo, but the skeleton is the same. And Nate is as funny as ever. 

This special, which just dropped on Amazon Prime, is more of what he does really well: Make fun of himself, find humor in the most random of situations (a frog jumping into a lake), and the joys and struggles of parenting (his wife and daughter always seem to come through for more material). 

It's a bit more animated than his past specials and a little sillier, but he's still his simple self. 

One of my most liked reviews on Letterboxd is for his special The Greatest Average American where I wrote: Not his best, but his best is really good. 

Well, this is up there with his best. A well-moving, constantly funny, well-crafted hour that plays like a Now That's What I Call Nate Bargatze.

I look forward to more. And will put my money where my mouth is.