Aziz Ansari, Right Now, Netflix: back after #MeToo disgrace, it’s as though he never went away

Aziz Ansari’s new Netflix special begins with the comedian slouching with conspicuous sheepishness through Brooklyn. His jitteriness may in part be explained by director Spike Jonze’s decision to position the camera uncomfortably close to the comic’s face. This is, presumably, an attempt to pop the bubble of celebrity around the stand-up superstar, and lay bare some inner vulnerability.

But Ansari’s jumpy body language as he walks to the venue must also owe something to his public shaming last year at the height of the #MeToo movement. A woman’s recollections of a creepy date with Ansari, published in an online journal, threatened to burn down his career around him.

Ansari, in his live comedy, television work and best-selling books on relationship advice, had positioned himself as the caring, man-hugging face of 21st-century masculinity. Now he was caught in an internet firestorm. He disappeared from view. For a while, it was unclear whether he had an audience to which he might return.

He deals with the furore at the top of the new set. “At times I felt scared, I felt embarrassed, I felt humiliated,” he says. “I just felt terrible.”

Ansari doesn’t delve into the particulars of the accusations, or about #MeToo more widely. Instead, he uses the obloquy as a prism though which to interrogate his attitudes toward life and the universe. The material will be familiar to anyone who has attended the show, which Ansari has toured extensively this year (audience members were required to hand over their phones, which is why it hasn’t leaked on YouTube).

Jonze, the one-time enfant terrible of left-field American cinema, contributes a surprising level of scepticism towards the star. His camera hovers tightly around Ansari, picking out the trickles of sweat, the occasional nervous stretch at the corner of his smile. Ansari’s Metallica t-shirt is slightly ill-fitting; a quick shave mightn’t have gone amiss. He doesn’t bask in the room’s love so much as politely deflect it. (This being America, people are on their feet and hooting the instant he steps onto the stage.)

The effect is to hint at inner self-doubt rather than, as is traditional with stand-up specials, to build the headliner up as a gladiator of giggles. Jonze’s agnosticism is welcome because, even after all the humiliation, Ansari can come across as immensely pleased with himself.

Here, he’s soon dissecting the culture of “wokeness” and the rush by white America rush to pat itself on the back over its progressiveness. Here and elsewhere, it’s clear that Ansari believes that he’s confronting the self-regarding masses with uncomfortable truths, rather than pointing out the perfectly obvious.

Weirdly, a 10-year-old sits at the front at one of the performances. (Jonze shot across several nights, splicing the results.) Ansari pokes good-natured fun at this kid – but what were his parents thinking, allowing him to attend a gig where sexual misconduct and the Michael Jackson and R Kelly controversies would loom so prominently?

The chortles that Ansari milks from Jackson and Kelly are as slick as you’d expect from one of the biggest names in comedy. (His estimated net worth is $18 million.) But he also has a maudlin side, which he goes on to indulge.

A segment regarding his grandmother, who suffers from Alzheimer’s disease, tugs at the heartstrings. Alas, it quickly leads into a cloying (and not particularly funny) monologue about reaching out to loved ones and understanding that they won’t be around forever. Again, this is an everyday intuition, which Ansari presents as if it were devastatingly original.

He concludes as he began, by reflecting on his recent difficulties. “I saw a world where I didn’t ever get to do this again,” he says. “It almost felt [as though] I’d died.” These musings constitute a searing postcard from the precipice of celebrity scandal.

More of that, and Right Now could have made for a riveting testimony from an A-lister chewed up and spat out by #MeToo. Ansari has, however, built his brand at the cuddly end of stand-up, and he isn’t for turning. For all his talk of death and renewal, he’s gone straight back to the day job, purveying comedy comfort-food.

As a grab-bag of chuckles and amateur philosophy, Right Now is completely serviceable. Anyone hoping for something deeper and darker risks being underwhelmed.

Aziz Ansari: Right Now is streaming now via Netflix