Often times, the various signs and jokes that are found on the background walls of the primitive little sets, are funnier than the puppet work (at "The Porn Barn," where sex callers work, there's an inspirational poster stating, "For $5 a minute, nothing is too disgusting.").Īnd truth be told, not many of the prank phone calls are all that funny, either - certainly they're not on a level with the best of The Jerky Boys or the aforementioned Full Metal Jacket calls (or the Joe Pesci Goodfellas calls, for that matter). You can easily listen to Crank Yankers without actually watching it, because the puppets add absolutely nothing to the mix. Most of the bits just feature these Jim Henson-like muppets mouthing the words of the recorded call, with nary a humorous addition of their own (the crazed monkey bit is probably the funniest puppetry shown here). It's rare in Crank Yankers when the level of puppetry offers anything close to the humor of the recorded call. How do you take something so dependent on your imagination, and make it work visually? I'm not sure you can, but I do know the puppets of Crank Yankers don't really sell the premise, either - especially when the puppet work is so bland in and of itself. So I can sympathize with Crank Yankers' problem in trying to take an essentially audio experience and making it work for TV. And with Star 69 and Caller I.D., can you even do prank phone calls anymore? Maybe it's a lost "art" after all.
Lee Ermey Full Metal Jacket calls, come close). Relatively innocent, and certainly puerile (a big laugh getter when we were in grade school was asking the local butcher if he had pig's feet), prank phone calls, at least practiced by the majority of stupid kids, would hardly be considered "art" (although The Jerky Boys and whoever did those R. Prank phone calls, at least when I was a kid, were a rite of passage. Calls were made in Nevada, the only state where only one party in a phone call has to be aware of a recording device (this was done to avoid lawsuits), with releases still sought from the marks once the bit was ready to air.
Are crank yankers real calls series#
Fans of the show may enjoy this compilation, but newcomers' reactions will depend on whether or not they accept the basic premise of the series - which may be problematic.Ĭreated by Adam Carolla and Jimmy Kimmel, and premiering on Comedy Central in 2002, Crank Yankers' premise was simple enough: get comedians to pull prank phone calls on unsuspecting marks, and then re-create the calls on TV via the use of rude little puppet shows. Comedy Central DVD and Paramount have released The Best of Crank Yankers: Uncensored, a 58-skit compilation of the Comedy Central hit show that, through the use of puppets, celebrates the "art" of the prank phone call.
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