Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Are You Smarter Than A Celebrity’ On Prime Video, Where Travis Kelce Hosts A Celebrity-Filled Spin-off Of ‘Are You Smarter Than A 5th Grader’

Don’t look now, but Travis Kelce is everywhere. Not only is he still catching passes from Patrick Mahomes on the Kansas City Chiefs and attending Yankees-Guardians playoff games with Taylor Swift, but he also landed a role in FX’s series Grotesquerie . Now, with a spinoff of the game show Are You Smarter Than A 5th Grader , he’s a game show host.

How To Watch ‘Are You Smarter Than A Celebrity’ For Free

‘Grotesquerie’: Travis Kelce Makes His Acting Debut With Apparent Nod to Taylor Swift

Opening Shot: Host Travis Kelce introduces himself and the audience joins him in saying, “This is Are You Smarter Than A Celebrity !”

The Gist: In Are You Smarter Than A Celebrity — a spinoff of Are You Smarter Than A 5th Grader — a contestant answers ten questions in various 1st through 5th grade-level subjects with the help of a panel of 5 celebrities. In the first episode, the celebrities are Nikki Glaser, Ron Funches, Chad Ochocinco, Natasha Leggero and Lilly Singh.

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For each of the ten questions answered correctly, the contestant goes up a money ladder that starts at $1,000 and ends at $50,000, with a $15,000 “safe spot” along the way. When the contestant gets there, they go home with at least that amount. One of the questions holds an “extra credit prize,” which is a handpicked prize based on what the contestant revealed to producers. If they get any question wrong along the way, they “flunk out.”

So where do the celebrities come into play? They all answer the question on tablets in front of them along with the contestant. Each celebrity comes up to assist the contestant for two questions. There are three “cheats” that also help the contestant: “Peek,” which lets you peek at what the celebrity that’s helping them wrote down; “Save”, which automatically saves the contestant, as long as the helper celebrity has the question right; and “Pop Quiz”, which substitutes the question for one about pop culture, and all the celebrities can confer and give a recommended answer.

After getting to the top of the money tree, the contestant gets a chance to answer a 6th grade-level question for $100,000, but if they get it wrong, they go back to $15,000. For this question, they can confer with any celebrity they choose.

What Shows Will It Remind You Of? As we mentioned, Are You Smarter Than A Celebrity is a spinoff of Are You Smarter Than A 5th Grader ; the celebrity factor gives the show a bit of a funny Match Game vibe.

Our Take: Let’s answer the question people are most curious about: Yes, Travis Kelce is a pretty good game show host. The Kansas City Chiefs tight end/podcast co-host/boyfriend of Taylor Swift has had more than enough time in front of cameras an microphones to know how to interact with the contestant and panel, and he’s been coached well at how to build tension. He’s funny and warm and has good banter with everyone participating on the show.

The game play itself isn’t bad, it just progresses too slowly. The way things are structured, only one contestant plays per 40-ish minute episode. So the pacing of the show needs to expand or contract to fill the allotted time, whether the contestant bowed out early or went all the way to the $100,000 question. This gives the audience time to get to know the contestant a bit, but there’s too much of the contestant prefacing their answer with a story or their thought process. But given that they have to only answer 10-11 relatively easy questions in the span of 40 minutes, the time has to be filled somehow.

The other part of the game that we’re not sure about is just what the celebrities are there for, aside from banter. The contestant isn’t playing against the celebrity; the celebrity is there to help, especially with the “cheats.” And we’re not sure why all the celebrities answer each question other than for entertainment purposes. In fact, the way the celebrities are utilized actually makes the show’s title make no sense. In a way, you want the celebrity to be smarter than you are, so when you go to them for help, they have enough knowledge to confidently answer the question.

Sex and Skin: None. We watched it with our 9-year-old and she got into it. The only part that made us cringe was an unbleeped answer Ochocinco gave to one of the questions.

Parting Shot: As we said above, if the contestant gets to the top of the money tree, they choose whether to leave with the $50k and the “extra credit” prize or risk all but $15k of it to go for the $100,000 question.

Sleeper Star: The first three episodes use the same panel of 5 celebrities, though the panels will switch up after that. Since everyone, including Kelce and the contestant, has to submit a school-age picture of themselves, we’ll give a lot of credit to Leggero for submitting an ’80s shot of her with frizzy blonde hair and headgear hooked to her braces.

Most Pilot-y Line: Nothing egregious, though after hearing some of the stories told by the first contestant in reference to some of the early questions, we wonder what the producers are encouraging them to talk about.

Our Call: STREAM IT. Like most modern game shows, Are You Smarter Than A Celebrity would be better if either the episodes were shorter or more than one contestant was brought on per episode. If that were the case, we can forgive the relative uselessness of the celebrities as a trade-off for the entertainment factor they bring. And Travis Kelce definitely has a Michael Strahan-esque future in media, given how much fun he is as host.

Joel Keller ( @joelkeller ) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and tech, but he doesn’t kid himself: he’s a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, RollingStone.com , VanityFair.com , Fast Company and elsewhere.

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