Liss Pereira: Adulting Review: Witty Response to Being an Average Individual in a World of Extremes

Liss Pereira: Adulting or Adulto Promedio just dropped on Netflix with a runtime of an hour. The new stand-up special has been written and performed by the Colombian comedian herself, produced by Imaginer Films and directed by Julio Cesar.

Adulting, just as the name suggests, is all about adults dealing with all their grown-up issues. However, millennials, or as Pereira calls them, the “middle generation” is caught between several comparisons in the new world. No matter what they do, they just can’t seem to win at life. It’s a hardship that most of us go through now after having suffered through catastrophes of our own design, putting the middle generation as a scapegoat in a “world of extremes”.

You can check out the trailer for the same on Netflix itself.

The official Netflix synopsis reads:

Comedian Liss Pereira gets real about relationships, adulthood and being somewhere in between — not perfect, but not so bad — in a world of extremes.

-Liss Pereira: Adulting Review Contains Spoilers-

Her comedy special opens with her thoughts on giving birth in this generation and how more stressful it is do so now more than ever. Likening the majority of us to social media influencers, who always feel the need to capture every moment of our life and post it on apps, regardless of the numbers following. There might as well be just seven followers, but one feels the need to announce one’s life to the world.

While it may be considered a means of seeking validation from external factors, she twists the joke around to pull the irony on society. So, if one posts the picture, they’re labelled as someone seeking attention but if you don’t post things about your new-born child, the same world will start calling you names.

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There are theatrics to her performance, especially when she dives into a musical performance to narrate the modern instances of romance and how absurd it would be if the actual reality of our love lives were to be represented in a way. This is just a part of her issues of the day. We claw for perfection for everything and anything, ultimately making room for excessive positivism and nothing else.

Our generation is not made up of “completely adults” because none of us is mature, rather, we’re all in denial about it, and so Pereira calls us all “adultescents in heart”. Her attitude throughout her performance is self-deprecating, and it shines through, especially in a world that constantly motivates you about being “perfect”. She bares the reality of the lives that millennials and Gen Z are leading.

We’re the generation that keeps a cactus or a succulent instead of other plants because a cactus makes us feel better about ourselves and a bit lesser dead inside. Vital instances like these all raise the question of what it means to be an average individual living in the midst of these extremities.

Liss Pereira Adulting: Worth the Watch?

What Pereira wants to talk about is real, straightforward and valid, but the delivery of the same doesn’t always stick the landing. The least expectation from stand-up is that you want to laugh and have a great time while whatever issues need to be conveyed reach you as well. In Liss Pereira’s case, her talk gets through us, but it often loses its comical factor midway.

One starts to question whether this is supposed to be a stand-up or a light-hearted TED talk. Again, it may have to do with the meanings getting lost in translation because I watched the episode with English subtitles. Nevertheless, her use of the screen on the screen to show the characters she’s talking about towards the end again makes it seem equivalent to a presentation than to a comedy special.

The comic delivery serves its purpose at certain points, but this episode would’ve served its purpose a lot more under the TED talk section on YouTube because then I would’ve respected her unique approach towards it. However, since it’s been put under the comedy section on Netflix, I had more expectations from it. Am I disappointed that I watched it? No, in a way, I’m glad that I watched this stand-up. Now that I know who Liss Pereira is, I feel like there’s a lot that she can achieve with her timing and theatricality, but that bit has been left unscathed for now.

Liss Pereira: Adulting is now streaming on Netflix.

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