Michael Bolton’s Big, Sexy Valentine’s Day Special has a terrible Netflix rating. At time of writing it only has two measly stars, which in fairness isn’t much of a surprise. When you give a show a title like this, you’re doomed to only attract diehard Michael Bolton fans.
And make no mistake, diehard fans will hate this. Because Michael Bolton’s Big, Sexy Valentine’s Day Special is weird. It’s deliberately, aggressively weird. It’s hammy and filthy and stupid, and a full-blown kick in the face to anyone who’s ever sincerely loved Bolton’s powerfully soft music.
It is also, by some distance, the funniest Netflix Original that’s ever been made. Michael Bolton’s Big, Sexy Valentine’s Day Special takes the form of a sort of faux telethon. Bolton – the real Bolton, performer of hits like How Am I Supposed to Live Without You – is tasked by Santa to create 75,000 new pregnancies in an hour, because he’s accidentally made 75,000 too many presents for next Christmas. Bolton responds by being as unstoppably sexy as he possibly can.
Presenting from his “love nest” – “designed by clinically insane Swedish architects to encourage optimal lovemaking” – Bolton introduces a range of erotic acts. Sarah Silverman and Randall Park perform a Sonny and Cher-style duet about pubes. Eric Andre teaches you how to do a dance called the Cupid Shuffle. Will Forte plays Bolton’s twin brother, Michael Folton. Maya Rudolph sings a song that contains about 20 key changes. And Bolton himself finds himself locked in a Duelling Banjos face-off with Kenny G, played by Andy Samberg.
Obviously, this is all so sexy that it inspires everyone to wear out their mattresses, much to the consternation of a furious mattress salesman who finds himself fulfilling so many lifetime guarantees that he goes crazy and accidentally murders Father Christmas. See? Weird.
Michael Bolton’s Big, Sexy Valentine’s Day Special is the creation of the Lonely Island and many of Comedy Bang Bang’s writers – including several Birthday Boys – who also jointly happen to be responsible for Samberg’s jarringly odd stint as Emmys host a couple of years ago. Its genesis appears to be Bolton’s appearance in the Lonely Island’s Jack Sparrow video, in which Bolton junked his reputation as a relentlessly sincere power balladeer in order to describe the plot of the Pirates of the Caribbean films in unnecessary detail. This is basically that shtick stretched out for an hour, but by God it works.
This is largely down to Bolton’s performance. Bolton is not a natural actor, and he seems slightly dazed by the contents of the special, to the point that it sometimes seems as if he’s just phonetically repeating back lines thrown at him by the writers. But what he is, though, is mercilessly game. He’s clearly up for anything – there’s a scene where he tries to seduce a woman via virtual reality, and another where Michael Sheen screams at him for two and a half minutes – and his willingness to send himself up is endearing. He never once tips over into the self-parodic desperation of David Hasselhoff, either, which was probably the biggest danger here.
So Bolton fans don’t like Michael Bolton’s Big, Sexy Valentine’s Day Special because it’s actually an esoteric hipster comedy. And you, a discerning fan of esoteric hipster comedy, haven’t watched it because it’s called Michael Bolton’s Big, Sexy Valentine’s Day Special. But you should. It’s screamingly funny, far more successful than that awful Netflix Bill Murray Christmas special and, if enough people watch it, maybe Netflix will do the decent thing and give the Birthday Boys a series. You should drop everything and check it out.
