The Meanest Roasts of Matt Rife’s New Netflix Special

Matt Rife gets a fair amount of bashing at Cracked, so to be fair, a bunch of his fans hit Twitter/X yesterday to congratulate him on Lucid, his new Netflix special made up exclusively of crowd work. High five, my guy!

Unfortunately, for Rife, many critics, Rotten Tomato viewers and other Twitter/X users didn’t quite see it that way. But did they have to be so mean?

“Matt Rife’s Netflix Crowd Work Special ‘Lucid’ Is a Snooze-Worthy Take on Dreams,” blared Variety’s headline. Despite improvising his entire special, “Rife never generates the electricity of true, transcendent spontaneity,” says the review. “By the end, it’s become a setup for more juvenile sex stories.”

“SKIP IT,” suggested Decider, proclaiming that Lucid’s loudest laughs came from audience members, not Rife’s off-the-cuff comebacks.

Over on IMDb, users weren’t kind either. “You can sleep on Lucid,” writes pandoradeschner. “None of the ‘jokes’ are made with any hint of cognition or forethought or clever wordplay. He’s wearing his own merch!!” 

“I like him as a comedian, but this special wasn't for me,” wrote aclarkcountry. “Members of the audience seemed like they were falling asleep.”

Idospasjody also claimed to be a fan, but Lucid just wasn’t it. “I will admit I only lasted about 15 minutes. The first bit with the mother-daughter seemed totally staged. It had to have been staged and that just seems like cheating and a gimmick.”

On Rotten Tomatoes, Nicholas H panned Lucid: “An hour of ‘meh’. It’s better as a 60-second clip on TikTok.”

Y B didn’t seem to like it any better in this word-salad review: “it’s the same except it’s worse and he got bad work done so it’s not.”

Let's head back over to Twitter/X for a final word:

Brutal.