Not everybody is going to laugh at a pockmarked Mexican being mistaken for Danny Trejo. I’m sorry, mistaken for “Machete.” Luckily, I would. Ah, I’m in the right crowd.
Gabriel “Fluffy” Iglesias does a therapy routine for stand up. That is to say, he bares his insecurities as entertainment. His insecurities are pretty good — he bookends the act with literal and metaphorical larger-than-life circumstances: dealing with a personal weight of 445 pounds (not a misprint) and reuniting with a father 30 years estranged.
The Fluffy Movie: Unity Through Laughter spares no detail in describing the effort to curtail obesity. The clinic nurse questions the 445, explaining that a confirmation will be necessary. “Why would I make that up?” Complains Fluffy. He’s not shy about telling us how close he was to death. In fact, he’s unbelievably good natured about pretty much everything. Gabriel Iglesias seems like a guy you’d invite to every gathering and be plenty sad if he ever had to turn you down.
He’s also pretty funny. Does he get ethnic? Why, yes. I found a handful of instances 
where the Latinos beside me found the shtick uproarious while I was stone-faced. But he never lingered there. I also found his rare, if possibly bigoted, impressions extremely funny. His accents and head bobs are dead on.
Honestly, the one glaring error in his stand up was a set exposition piece at the beginning where seven-year-old “Gabriel” discovers his love for comedy by tricking his mother into letting him rent and watch Eddie Murphy: Raw. For those not in the know, Raw is pretty mean-spirited and derisive comedy — pretty much exactly what the self-effacing rotund comedian strives to avoid. Raw, IMHO, signaled the end of Eddie Murphy‘s reign as funniest man in America, never to return. My guess is this moment is biographical, because, Dios Mio niño, did you not get that Murphy’s Delirious was 100 times the stand up that Raw is?
Fluffy gets points for jocularity and proximity (put a Golden Gate Bridge on your stage and I’ll give you at least a star, no question) and as long as he can stick to the self-deprecating biography … and the land of the living, he will get my attention again.
Finding laughs can be tough-y
Seek the audience not too stuffy
Losing weight, lots of rough-y
No es gordo, solamente Fluffy
Rated PG-13, 101 Minutes
D: Manny Rodriguez, Jay Lavender
W: Gabriel Iglesias
Genre: Ethnic stand up
Person most likely to enjoy this film: Danny Trejo
Person least likely to enjoy the film: THE MAN
