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Kyle Dunnigan: Craig’s All Star, Rockin’ Christmas, You Guys!

Comedy Reviews christmas
Kyle Dunnigan: Craig’s All Star, Rockin’ Christmas, You Guys!

Comedian Kyle Dunnigan can do a little bit of everything. He’s a stand-up, impressionist, writer for Inside Amy Schumer, actor, podcast host (“Professor Blastoff”), podcast guest, YouTube presence and boyfriend of Sarah Silverman. But Dunnigan might best be known for Craig, his longtime original character that lives with his mom, sports some Wozniak caliber specs and always seems to be a little too ambitious for his own good (like the time he tried to cut his own hair). On Tuesday, Craig released his own Christmas album, on which he proclaims his love for the holidays alongside sexy-sounding backup singers and the likes of Bill Maher, Tim Gunn, Paul McCartney and Donald Trump…or Dunnigan’s impressions of them, anyway. The whole thing seems like what Kip from Napoleon Dynamite’s dreams are made of.

Craig’s All Star, Rockin’ Christmas, You Guys! sees Dunnigan’s Craig as host and star of a 16-track holiday spectacular that includes songs, fake Donald Trump commercials (advertising things like the gold frogs at Trump Swamp) and Craig hashing it out with the celebrities he impersonates. Dunnigan does a good Tim Gunn, who tires to make sure disgruntled elves are looking their best before hitting the clubs on “Tim Gunn Vs. The Elves,” but the most clever incorporation of an impersonation is the three times Craig tries to sing a Christmas duet with Bill Maher, only to have something in the song send Maher into a rank about society, causing the song to have to end after only a few seconds. Who wouldn’t be offended by “Don we now our gay apparel”?

The album’s songs are hit and miss, the standouts being “”Fuck You Mistletoe, a country ballad sung with gusto by a sexually confused cowboy, and “Santa’s Stuck Up In Our Chimney and We Can’t Find Our Dad,” which features Amy Schumer singing joyfully about how dad is going to come and save Santa, who is stuck in the chimney, unable to realize that Santa and dad are the same person.

Craig’s All Star, Rockin’ Christmas… also includes an Abbot and Costello-style voice sketch (“I Was Acting”) between two wannabe actors who can’t take each other seriously because they keep saying “I was just acting,” after everything they say. It would have been nice for the album to have featured a few more straight voice sketches like this in place of some of the not-as-memorable songs, but all in all, Dunnigan’s Christmas album delivers a perverted kind of holiday cheer you won’t be able to find anywhere else.

Click here to read Paste’s recent interview with Dunnigan, in which he discusses his Christmas album, working with Amy Schumer and the role of embarrassment in the life of a comedian.

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