Bo Burnham: The Inside Outtakes – Review

Bo Burnham is genuinely one of the most fascinating and interesting people in the entertainment industry. Period.

When the COVID-19 outbreak started to take over the world, millions of people were forced to quarantine inside their homes. Naturally, this meant that almost the entire world was stuck with no idea what to do, resorting to playing video games, watching movies at home, sleeping, and eating a lot.

But not Bo Burnham. He took the time to create a fully-fledged film discussing his thoughts on the world and what it’s like to be stuck inside with his film Inside, which was filled to the brim with insightful commentary that was further accentuated by amazing original songs finished off with a humorous touch.

And despite the fact that Inside and the songs that were showcased in the film are over one year old now, I still find myself listening to the soundtrack at least every week or every other week. They’re just so addicting, funny, and thought-provoking, and I’ll never be able to understand how Burnham just spontaneously wrote some of my all-time favorite songs.

But as with any film, not everything Burnham filmed for Inside made it to the final cut, which is why now, a year later, we have The Inside Outtakes, which technically isn’t a film per se, but since this project is on Letterboxd and IMDb, and since it’s well over an hour and complete with tons of new songs, I wanted to review this.

Don’t go into this project expecting Inside 2 because if you do, you’ll be disappointed. Sure, we get plenty of new songs, but really, this is mainly to showcase the behind-the-scenes making of Inside, which was filmed entirely by Burnham while inside of his house during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Here, we get to see all of his frustrations and thoughts which was utterly fascinating. Oftentimes in The Inside Outtakes, we’ll see Burnham sitting down trying to come up with how to sing one of his now iconic songs such as Problematic, but not necessarily knowing how to approach it.

As for the new songs that are introduced here, they’re absolutely amazing and I can’t wait to hear how incredible Inside (Deluxe) is going to sound. Hopefully it gets released on vinyl because I, for one, would love to hear The Future, Biden, The Chicken, and Bezos IV on my setup.

Bo Burnham: The Inside Outtakes is a deeply interesting, insightful, and oftentimes hilarious look at the behind-the-scenes making of the comedian’s hit quarantine special.