Sklarbros Attack

Movie: Held Up

My Rating: 4 stars

I normally don’t have any patience for web series’.  I always feel like I need to sit down with my computer and watch them all in one sitting once the whole thing is completed (or wait for it to be available through Netflix), because I don’t trust myself to remember to come back to the website to check for updates.  But, I was willing to make an exception for the Sklar Brothers.  Those guys are so funny, and I’d watch anything they created.  Plus, once I started watching this show, I realized that it stars tons of other, hilarious comedians that I love—Jon Dore, Tig Notaro, Maria Bamford, Steve Agee, Sean Tillman.  It’s awesome.  The basic premise is that a pair of bank robbers is holding up a small branch bank.  But, before they can get away, another pair of inept robbers (the Sklar Bros) shows up to do the very same thing.  The resulting chaos wastes so much time that the local police, the state police, and the National Guard have all had time to arrive on the scene, creating a very tense (yet comedic) hostage situation.  To make matters worse, the hostages are all pretty uppity and demanding.  And, once that Stockholm Syndrome starts to set in, the robbers are going to have an even harder time concentrating with all the sexual advances the hostages are start to make. Naturally, hilarity ensues.

This is a pretty easy web series to consume in one sitting.  There are fifteen episodes, but each one is only about six minutes long, so the whole thing isn’t longer than your average movie.  I do find the format of having to watch each episode separately to be a little annoying.  I’m easily distracted, so I like consolidating all my entertainment in one location that will remind me what I haven’t watched yet.  But, really, I’m just glad that this sort of comedy series is available to stream on the internet.  I love that all this awesome content is so readily available these days, so I’m not going to complain too much.  Plus, if I were patient (again, not one of my strongest suits), this series would probably show up on Netflix sooner or later anyway.  I highly recommend that you head over to Crackle.com to check out.  It features so many of my favorite comics that it’s a nice, compact way to get a heavy dose of their quirky, slightly rude humor.  I learned about it because the Sklars were pitching it on their comedy podcast.  Incidentally, that’s another piece of entertainment that you should probably subscribe to.