Rating: NNN
In small doses, the on-camera interview antics of MuchMusic’s West Coast correspondent Nardwuar the Human Serviette can be very entertaining, particularly when he’s blindsiding some unsuspecting music celebrity, politician or televangelist with probing questions about situations they’d rather forget. Take the whole Jean Chretien pepper spray incident, which turned out to be our intrepid reporter’s crowning glory. That’s well documented on the Doot Doola Doot Doo… Doot Doo! double DVD set, based around MuchMusic’s two-part Nard Wars clip retrospective, which includes head-scratching faceoffs with Snoop Dogg, Vanilla Ice, Marilyn Manson, Michael Moore, Jello Biafra, Henry Rollins, Dan Quayle, Courtney Love and many others. But because the interviews are edited down to short sound bites, you don’t get to see Nardwuar gradually winding up his subjects with progressively more inane and specific questions, which is part of what makes his sneaky shtick unique and funny.
There’s a second disc of unseen footage where you’d hope to see hilarious moments when things go more awry than usual instead we get slightly expanded versions of the bouts we’ve already seen. The interrogation of Ian MacKaye is surprisingly informative and entertaining, but where are all the violent confrontations, hat-swiping scenes and abrupt ejections? Still, five and a half hours of Nardwuar is a lot to take.
