Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Tiffany Haddish: Black Mitzvah’ On Netflix, When A Star Comes Of Age

She may sing “Hava Nagila” and have a Jewish father, but Tiffany Haddish got put into foster care at 12 instead of getting a Bat Mitzvah. She makes up for it and then some, as her first solo Netflix comedy special, Tiffany Haddish: Black Mitzvah comes out today on her 40th birthday. Lordy lordy! Look who’s a legit star!

TIFFANY HADDISH: BLACK MITZVAH: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

The Gist: “People think they know everything about me.” Haddish tells us this even before we see her onscreen or onstage in this, her first solo Netflix special. Haddish previously released a stand-up special on Showtime in 2017, She Ready! From The Hood to Hollywood (read my glowing review). She broke through in a big way that year thanks to her scene-stealing work in Girls Trip, parlaying that success into a deal with Netflix that also included a showcase for her friends in stand-up (They Ready), as well as the animated series with Ali Wong, Tuca & Bertie (#RIP).

And that’s not even counting the four movies she starred or co-starred in during 2018 (Uncle Drew, Night School, The Oath, Nobody’s Fool), or five more films this year (voice-overs in animated sequels The Lego Movie 2: The Second Part, The Secret Life of Pets 2, The Angry Birds Movie 2, plus The Kitchen, and Between Two Ferns: The Movie).

She jokes, but not really, about only having 40 days off during all of last year. And in an opening rap she tacks onto “Hava Nagila,” she previews how her hour will catch us up on how she’s handling her newfound fame, including the highs and the lows.

What Comedy Specials Will It Remind You Of?: Haddish’s Netflix debut comes out just after Lil Rel Howery’s HBO premiere. The two stars have risen together, from their first big network sitcom breaks together as each other’s exes on NBC’s The Carmichael Show in 2015, to similar big-screen chemistry on Uncle Drew. In their solo specials, they both make light of how their real-life relatives came out of the woodwork to hit them up for money and favors. In terms of energy and charisma, Haddish has an abundance of it. Making her comedy closer to that of her co-star from The Last O.G., Tracy Morgan.

Memorable Jokes: This hour finds Haddish time and again making the most out of a bad situation.

From her early sexual foibles, and her foster-care solutions to them (some of which include photo illustrations on a big screen behind Haddish onstage) to a show-stopping moment about 15 minutes in, when Haddish actually stops what she’s doing so the production crew can re-adjust the mic pack on her lower back, sweep the stage and even mop her brow. She finds a way to keep things light and fun. “I’m about to be molested up here,” she quips about her mic pack, and leans into it, literally and figuratively.

Another comedian might have cut that minute or two from the special. Not Haddish.

Keeping it real means keeping it all in the picture, especially when rehashing her disastrous New Year’s Eve show in Miami a year ago, which made Haddish a trending topic for all the wrong reasons. She blames it on the alcohol she drank the night before, and will reintroduce as evidence the Instagram video she posted to promote her New Year’s Eve show that morning. This video.

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A post shared by Tiffany Haddish (@tiffanyhaddish) on Dec 31, 2018 at 11:39am PST

Why’d she go get so drunk and hungover, though? Haddish jokes about how we all have that one friend who talks us into making horrible decisions. Her friend reminded her she hadn’t truly celebrated all of her accomplishments, which not only included the TV and movie credits listed earlier in this review, but also her Emmy-winning performance hosting Saturday Night Live, and a Grammy nomination for reading the audiobook of her best-selling memoir, The Last Black Unicorn.

Haddish jokingly recounts both her party night and her onstage bomb (“She was not ready!”), and how cell phones be snitching, as well as the following couple of days, re-enacting phone calls she received from Kevin Hart, Oprah, and Sinbad. They all offered words of encouragement, but it was Sinbad’s who really moved her. She claims Sinbad also acknowledged bombing on New Year’s Eve once, but that nobody deemed it newsworthy. “They all talked about you…That means you made it. You a star.”

She also jokes, but quickly assures us “it’s not a joke” that even with fame, her love life is lacking. And that she wants to buy her grandmother her own house just so she won’t interfere with potential hookups. Which leads to Haddish revealing to us, in words and act-outs, how what she looks for in a man has changed as she has become a “grown-ass woman.”

Our Take: In show business, conventional wisdom holds that comedians move to New York City to improve as stand-ups, and move to Los Angeles to go Hollywood. L.A. has comedians, too, but also so many performers, because to an actor or actress, the comedy club stage represents yet another potential audition.

What does that have to do with this?

Even though Haddish began her comedy career as a teenager attending the Laugh Factory Comedy Camp on Sunset Boulevard, she’s always been more star-in-the-making than stand-up grinder. It may have taken 20 years for Hollywood to catch on, but catch on they did, showcasing her star qualities on TV and in movies. Stars are human, like us. But they’re also, for better or worse, different. As Haddish’s own closing act-out demonstrates, we’re willing to throw our money at stars, even if they’re not earning it like everyone else anymore. It’s a joke in the moment, but it’s also a metaphor.

Our Call: SKIP IT. If you love Haddish, you’ll watch her do anything. Especially on her birthday. You’ll want to support her. But if you want to remember why she’s a star who can hang with Beyoncé and Drake, then watch Haddish in anything from her TV or movie catalog that’s available to stream instead.

Sean L. McCarthy works the comedy beat for his own digital newspaper, The Comic’s Comic; before that, for actual newspapers. Based in NYC but will travel anywhere for the scoop: Ice cream or news. He also tweets @thecomicscomic and podcasts half-hour episodes with comedians revealing origin stories: The Comic’s Comic Presents Last Things First.

Watch Tiffany Haddish: Black Mitzvah on Netflix