Summary
Not especially groundbreaking or original, the slightly bland ‘men are like this, women are like this’ subject matter is made up for with well-crafted jokes and confident and likable delivery in Ricard Quevedo’s Los Amargado Somos Mas.
Hands up, I know a little bit less than bugger all about Colombian comedy and prior to watching Los Amaragados Somos Mas, I had not encountered Ricardo Quevedo at all before. Even a little bit of light googling did not do much to illuminate me any further as the vast majority of search results came back in Spanish, which I don’t speak. So, this review will have to simply focus on his new Netflix Special and won’t really add much in terms of the context in his wider catalog. Good? Good.
So, now we’ve got that out of the way, let’s have a look at Los Amargados Somos Mas, the hour-long stand-up special streaming now on Netflix. In the great canon of stand-up comedy, this show probably lands somewhere squarely in the middle. There is nothing groundbreaking to see here but what there is is well executed and delivered with an impish smirk that wins you over.
The gags, for the most part, focus on the different ways that men and women approach being in relationships, how women have expectations of men that men are woefully ill-equipped to meet, and the myriad pitfalls associated with being in a relationship in an age where communication is reliant on the use of smartphones and messaging apps. As I said, nothing especially groundbreaking in terms of material; but despite that Quevedo does have a lovely way of constructing a joke. His delivery is conspiratorial and knowing, he appears to be pointing out universal truths to the audience but lends a good sprinkling of self-deprecation in there and avoids coming off as hectoring or sanctimonious. There is a good and recurrent use of call-backs to earlier jokes which helps to knit the show together and make it feel like a single piece of work rather than simply a series of gags stitched together arbitrarily.
It is clear this show has been work-shopped to within an inch of its life, there is absolutely no fat on it at all and the hour you spend with Quevedo passes by quickly and pleasantly. The observations are amusing enough; one or two made me laugh heartily whereas a couple of others perhaps felt a touch more labored. Overall this is a well crafted stand-up show delivered by a competent and confident performer. I maybe would have liked it to take a few more chances, perhaps been a bit more personal or inventive; but it is not trying to be those things and so we should try and judge it on its own standards, which it manages to live up to.
