TV Review: Jamie Foxx Brings Energy and Vulnerability to New Hulu Comedy Special "Take Care of Yourself"

Today comedian and actor Jamie Foxx (Ray / Collateral / Django Unchained) dropped his new standup comedy special Take Care of Yourself via the Disney-owned streaming service Hulu. Laughing Place was provided with an early screener of the special, and below are my thoughts.

I want to start of this review by saying I am probably not the exact target audience for Jamie Foxx: Take Care of Yourself. While I am a big comedy fan in general, and I grew up at least in part on FOX's (and Foxx's) In Living Color sketch comedy show in the early 90s, I am perhaps a bit too "White & Nerdy" (as "Weird Al" Yankovic might put it) for some of the bits in this special, especially when-- in multiple instances-- Jamie has his audience sing along to hip-hop and R&B songs that I had never once heard before in my life. I will also say, however, that despite that hurdle, by the end the comedian had mostly won me over by relating to me as someone who often feels like an outsider... but I'll get back to that later.

Though today's audiences might mostly know Jamie Foxx as an award-winning actor and occasional music artist, he got his start in standup and in 2024 starred in a "comeback" special of sorts called What Had Happened Was... just a couple of years ago after a headline-making health scare, the impact of which still reverberates throughout Take Care of Yourself. In this new hour, Foxx ruminates on the realities of aging, jokes about the energy provided by Adderall, provides fairly hacky impressions of celebrities like Dave Chappell, Denzel Washington, and Al Pacino in an eye-rolling "What if their 'gay' flared up?" bit (the absolute low point of the special), and riffs on why Bad Bunny's Super Bowl special made white people-- not to mention President Trump-- so angry.

But Foxx started to really grab my attention around the halfway point when he starts tackling less well-trod and obvious ground, like how Black people have a complicated relationship with ICE (this bit got the special's first real guffaw out of me) and a story about how he was accosted by a gangbanger at the upscale Malibu restaurant Nobu, and he didn't know how to react. And here's where Jamie Foxx's vulnerability as an internationally famous personality began to shine through, because as an aging Black celebrity who lives (by his own admission in this special) in the mostly white (and "safe") Los Angeles neighborhood of Westlake Village, the common theme of Take Care of Yourself is that wherever he goes, he feels like an outsider.

The climax of the special is another apparently true-to-life story about attending a nightclub in Miami and falling face-forward after a dizzy spell while surrounded by other repeatedly named A-list celebs. Here Foxx admits to feeling out of place again because of his age, and its his honesty about the situation and willingness to poke fun at himself that draws laughs out of his unfortunate collapse and subsequent rescue. So while I may not have been the right demographic for some of the broader cultural references in Take Care of Yourself, I did connect with it once Jamie began to get personal and get real. As a side note, I also want to point out that this comedy special was directed by Troy Miller, who I am aware of through his work on Mr. Show, Arrested Development, and Flight of the Conchords. He has also previously helmed specials for standups like Katt Williams, George Lopez, Marlon Wayans, Nate Bargatze, Chelsea Handler, and John Oliver, so he definitely knows his way behind the curtain for a live show like this, and the production here is breezy and watchable, with the camerawork never calling attention to itself or intruding on the material. So ultimately I would say Jamie Foxx fans are in good hands both on and off the stage.

Jamie Foxx: Take Care of Yourself is now available to stream via Hulu.