"Sometimes I’m so mad, I can’t even breathe." It's not something you'd expect to tumble out of the mouth of Conan O'Brien, who's constructed an entire on-screen career around the perception that, in addition to being funny, he'd probably be nice if you ran into him at Macy's.
But it's that rage — stemming from his infamous divorce from NBC’s Tonight Show in 2009 — that justifies Conan O'Brien Can’t Stop, a concert film and character study that chronicles his 2010 "Legally Prohibited from Being Funny on Television Tour," a stage show O'Brien organized in response to NBC's stipulation that the host refrain from producing recorded media for six months, lest he jeopardize the settlement paid out by the network.
O'Brien, who’s always cut a magnetically boyish image despite his Harvard pedigree (see "Bear, The Masturbating"), is not "on" for most of Can’t Stop — instead he's human, bitching at his tireless personal assistant, criticizing the catering, whining about life on the road and being upfront about the fact that he's a garden-variety addict when the drug in discussion is applause. (Take the footage at Bonnaroo, where he moans about his duty introducing bands up until the second he jumps on stage and soaks in the roars of the crowd.)
Though it's difficult to sympathize with O'Brien when he complains about how hard it is to meet-and-greet with fans who shelled out $700 for the privilege of shaking his hand, this is a very watchable documentary, but due more to its rueful honesty than its belly-laugh quotient.
