Ellen DeGeneres: The Beginning
Ellen DeGeneres: The Beginning
| 23 July 2000 (USA)
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Ellen shares her humorous observations on daily life, including remembering names, clothing, the need for approval, and making personal videos in this post-coming-out performance, fully acknowledges Ellen DeGeneres's status as America's most famous lesbian.

Reviews
Manthast

Absolutely amazing

SpunkySelfTwitter

It’s an especially fun movie from a director and cast who are clearly having a good time allowing themselves to let loose.

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Erica Derrick

By the time the dramatic fireworks start popping off, each one feels earned.

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Fleur

Actress is magnificent and exudes a hypnotic screen presence in this affecting drama.

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Jensen Nguyen

This performance marks 3 years after the "come-out" of Ellen Degeneres. FYI, Ellen was raised in a strict Christian Science environment, and although she no longer goes to that church, she believes in God and her belief is evidently shown in this performance. As she always has been funny and witty style, Ellen also shows her love and passion for people and animals. My favorite part is how Ellen chooses to end the show with such impressive story of her meeting with God. It makes us laugh for the moment, but then when we find "the silence", we can see how incredible and sophisticated this woman is. If you are a fan of Ellen DeGeneres, you cannot miss this.

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hmcaminiti

You can read what some nay sayers post or you can read a professional critique, without a slant that one much question if homophobia played a role instead of fair and balanced review. Ellen doesn't have a top rated TV show AGAIN by mistake, read below..............This post-coming-out performance fully acknowledges Ellen DeGeneres's status as America's most famous lesbian, but it is nevertheless imbued with a sense of fun. For instance, rather than describe the experience of closet-exiting on her self-titled situation comedy in the late 1990s, she performs an amusing "interpretive dance." She uses her trademark goofiness to ruminate on the necessity of directions on shampoo bottles, ant road rage, and the possible nightmarish consequences of buying cheese. While the performance is not orientation-specific, the comedienne spends a fair amount of time on sex-related issues, including jokes about blow-up dolls and people who videotape their relations. She does venture into the political with an appeal for same-sex marriage and a monologue on meeting God, who turns out to be a middle-aged black woman. None of this fazes her clearly supportive audience at New York's Beacon Theatre who get to ask her questions at the end à la Carol Burnett. The best moment of the 65-minute performance for HBO comes at the end, when DeGeneres accidentally exhibits some gender confusion with a young audience member, who then pays her moving tribute as a role model. --Kimberly Heinrichs

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LITP (lostintwinpeaks)

Ellen live in the Beacon Theatre, and welcome back Ellen! Good to see you again!Best moments include the shampoo bottle jokes, and Ellen's interpretative dance routine at the beginning.Otherwise, standard Ellen fare (and that's no bad thing) with Ellen going off on every possible tangent.More please!

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sminkydink

Ellen Degeneres is one of my fave actresses and I admire her honesty and her ability to babble to an audience for over an hour without stopping! I live in England and you can only get this on video here, I watched it with 4 of my friends (all aged 16) and only me and one of my male friends enjoyed it. No-one else quite understood Ellen's quirks and rambling habits. Still, I give this one an 8 or 9. Nice work Ellen, keep it up. :)

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