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Comedian Polak: Great weird entertainment
Photo: Netflix
One of the most stubborn and at the same time vulgar expressions of our time is the phrase that a person (m / f / d) has "shown eggs" or finally "shown eggs".
As if the male gonads, as they rock between the thighs, weren't the most sensitive and vulnerable part of the body at all.
The nonsense would only make sense the other way round.
Whoever has
no
eggs is
brave and painless
.
Like Oliver Polak, 45, comedian, columnist, singer, dancer, and recently even a king.
The thing with the testicles - and how they got lost due to illness - he tells himself in the hardware store, between chainsaws and carpeting, as a suggestive purr.
And how his listener, Christian Ulmen, struggles to find the right attitude in the face of the bizarre story and then actually finds and takes it, is one of the highlights of Polak's Netflix special "Your Life Is A Joke".
The man nothing lurking
The concept is simple, a mixture of blind date, "carpool karaoke" and stand-up.
A road movie
in miniature
, in which Polak rolls through the big city in the golden Opel Manta with people he only briefly knows - to start with, these are Ulmen, the rapper Nura and the singer Jennifer Weist.
There is talk, now and then Polak sings a song, and in the evening there is a roast in front of an audience - mocking jokes based on what his guests carelessly told him during the day.
This final performance serves the dramaturgy and is very nice because Polak often exaggerates observations that you have made as a viewer.
The real fun, however, is the time the comedian spends with his "victims".
It starts with the title song on the car radio that Polak sings to his co-drivers, a creamy composition by Carsten Meyer alias Erobique. Again and again he will dance to his guests, sing to them, poke them on and in this way take them into the gentle headlock of his attention - Christian Ulmen, for example, in the car wash. Despite all the contemplation, there is still time to philosophize about certain pornographic practices on the occasion of the foaming and splashing water.
Polak stages himself with his physicality that fills the room as a figure that poses no real danger.
The man has nothing lurking, doesn't want to "find out" anyone, seems genuinely interested.
With this embracing and disarming cordiality, he manages to get even more reserved people to talk, including about their own vulnerabilities.
Be it Jennifer Weist, who addresses the complicated relationship with her father.
Be it Nura, who tells about her mother's migration story and who thinks Germany is great, even if - to Polak's horror - she still doesn't have a passport.
She just hopes that one day Germany will want her "on the team".
It is up to the guests where the journey goes.
With elms to the hardware store or to the noble restaurant in Potsdam, with Nura to the nail salon or to the fortune teller - Polak meets with amused skepticism.
The Jewish is always a subtle part of his role, for example when the fortune teller mentions the rapper's date of birth: "Joa, birthday 88, is a lucky number in Germany anyway."
There are enchanting scenes, for example, when Ulmen and Polak cling to each other without a word while bathing in the Heiligen See in Potsdam because it is so cold, and Polak says after a while: “I think that's also luck that we're just here now Elmen had previously revealed that he did have friends, “people who are close to me, but I actually really like to be alone”.
"Your Life Is A Joke" shows Polak as the radiant heater in German comedy.
It produces such human warmth that the protective shields of even the most skeptical guests will soon melt away.
This little series is a pleasure, especially because so much is happening in the faces.
In their facial expressions you can see how they go through all aggregate states - from the uncertainty to the ashamed and the defiant self-assertion to the opening as if there were no cameras.
Then Polak has her where he wanted her, he'll remember that for the evening.
And it is only during the stand-up routine that something that you didn't miss during the day when driving around with the Manta gently comes into play: irony.
You can do without that as much as possible and still have a lot of funny entertainment if you are really brave and painless.