Juste pour Rire

I went here for Weird Al Yankovic’s show and it was hilarous! Just for Laughs is a huge festival with different shows everyday, but you have to choose which show you want to go to. There’s also fun games, swings, comedy shows, and it’s nice to enjoy and laugh! Love Montréal and all its different kinds of festivals!

My favourite Montréal summer festival. Have been attending for years! I have been a fan since it was on St-​Denis. There’s always entertainment; street performers, large venues, random characters and now more recently being at the Quartier de Spectacles, there are food trucks. Definitely recommend in checking out the line-​ups each year as there’s always a fan favourite comedian in town… you will most definitely get a chance to meet and take pictures with them! Or enjoy the free shows/​concerts!
Have fun!

Been attending for about 20 yrs now. Have had many great shows and a few slightly disappointing ones. Last night my wife and I dragged a friend and his wife to their first JFL show. We caught Orny Adams at the theatre Ste Catherine. Orny made it into my top 4 – 5 shows in 20 years. Very funny man. Bring some tissue to wipe the eyes cause you will laugh a lot. My kind of show. The small venue made it very intimate. Friends are new converts that we will have to include in our annual summer trek from Eastern Ontario. Thanks for the laughs JFL.

i love the fest! it used to be in quartier latin which was quite a small space compare to what it is today in quartier des spectacles.
while i’m not a fan of the QDS area as its way too busy and having food trucks stationed there, at times, not in a very logistic way, i do love the off-​jfl segments of the fest. smaller venue with not as wildly popular comedians makes it a more intimate but also more raw moments. when comedians can go loose with their material and not having to worry about stuck up bitches, you’re in for a treat.
if you love galas or tend to have a stick up your butt, you’ll find what you’re looking for at the QDS area. if, like me, you prefer smaller, intimate and charming venue then the off-​jfl portion of the fest will satisfy you. not only are they awesome, they tend to always have deep discount every day making it a no brainer.
highly recommended if you love to laugh (who doesn’t?)

Hi,
I just returned from the Just for Laughs festival. The festival was great but the service was horrible. This is why:
1) I had to call multiple times and never received my JFL pass in the mail.
2) I didn’t get tickets to the shows I wanted to because they were sold out or not accessible with my advertised as «see-​all-​the-​shows» pass.
3) The username and password did not work, twice, to login to the JFL site to pick my choice of one free daily show and had to wait on the phone, twice, to clear up the problem.
Here is a full explanation:
When I decided to buy tickets for the festival, I had two choices:
1) Buy tickets for each comedy show
2) Buy a JFL Passport
The JFL Passport gets you tickets to 3 shows of your choice and you can also choose one show to go to everyday of the festival. I looked over the shows I wanted to see and did the math. The JFL Passport would allow me to see the shows I wanted to see for a cheaper price than if I bought tickets for all my individual show picks.
I called the box office to order the JFL passport and they told me how the «1 free show a day» works. I would have to login to their system, the morning of the show, and if a show was not sold out, I could get tickets. I asked if tickets were usually available the day of… they said yes.
I bought 4 Passports for my friends and I.
I waited for a month for my Passports to come in the mail and called multiple times to ask where they were. I was told twice that they would be at my home soon. In the end, the passes never came and during my last conversation with the JFL, they told me to pick them up at the box office.
When I got to the festival, I looked up the shows I wanted to see and all of them were sold out. I even ended up buying tickets to a show that was just about to sell out.
When it came to login to the system to get my free show for my first day at JFL… my login info didn’t work. I was stuck waiting on the phone for 20 min. The box office looked into my Passport login info for 10 minutes. During that time, the tickets for that day were being taken by other Passport holders.
I couldn’t get tickets to my first picks but got a ticket to a show I was moderately interested in.
They assured me the problem was fixed and I would be able to login the following day.
The following day… my login info did not work again. I was stuck waiting on the phone… again.
When I finally spoke to someone, they looked into the problem. They asked what show I wanted to see and after telling them… they told me that my Passport does not get me tickets into that particular show. It didn’t even matter that there were tickets available on their website. This is all after hearing a commercial for the Passport, while holding for a JFL box office worker, that proclaimed «SEE ALL THE SHOWS WITH YOUR JFL PASSPORT.»
I complained to the worker and she said she could do nothing to help me.
FOR FUTURE CUSTOMERS: I recommend you DO NOT BUY THE PASSPORT (if it is the same system, next year.) You cannot see «all-​the-​shows.» Most shows will sell out and you will not be able to see some of the shows you want to see.
It is safer to spend the extra money to assure you get to see what you want, not have to deal with their faulty online system and spend as little time as possible dealing with them.
Hopefully, they improve their JFL Passport, online system and customer service so you can get what you want to see, get a deal for spending so much money and not feel disrespected as a paying customer.
Hope this helps.
Thanks.

This is not a review, more of a question.
I’ve been to the festival twice now and the shows are first rate. I’m thinking of going this year and notice that they have a ticket passport option.
Does anyone have an experience of this?

The biggest comedy festival in the world is bound to have it’s highs and lows but one thing is for sure, if you like stand up you’ll like this. The big gala shows are fun if you like seeing comedy with a giant audience, and these are frequently being shot for later broadcast on TV so you get subjected to some additional hilarity if the host screws up an intro and needs to redo it over and over for TV (I’m looking at you Joel McHale.)
Downtown Montréal gets crazy during the fest with streets blocked off for food trucks and circus arts etc. Too often during the fest I’ve walked through the fest area and seen empty stages and streets closed though — maybe I just have bad timing but I feel like more could be done in terms of free outdoor festing. The amazing nights of the fest often seem to happen late night in the smaller clubs around town — Grumpy’s and the Nest — and at the hotel bar where performers clump and congregate to spend time with each other and practice their uniquely hilarious drunken oneupmanship.

The shows I’ve been to have been pretty great. However, the administration behind Just for Laughs have been terrible. They use purolator to send out their tickets, which requires that someone be home between 9 to 5 to accept them (never mind that ridiculous concept). If no one is home, they bring their packages in this warehouse in the middle of nowhere that is far from accessible. When I realized that I wouldn’t be able to be home (you know, from working the same hours as the Purolator people) to accept the tickets, I decided to call JFL to have them change the address to my parents’ place, where someone could accept the tickets. This occurred 30 seconds after I bought the tickets. I called every number on their site with no luck. No one ever answered. I emailed them as well. I called Purolator and they said they couldn’t do anything about it.
I called several times a day for several days, and kept emailing them, but JFL NEVER got back to me. I left messages and never received one back. After a week I was forced to pay Purolator $ 65 to reroute my tickets to my parents’ address. This was infuriating to me, especially since my parents’ address is so close to mine (but the warehouse where the tickets were being held was 120 km away). I tried calling/​emailing JFL one last time after having received the tickets to see if I could get some kind of compensation (or at the very least, an apology), but I never heard a word from them till this day.
The only reason I’m not giving this a one star review is that the shows themselves are pretty great. The particular show I bought the tickets for was extremely funny. It’s just really shitty of JFL to ignore me and force me to pay more than the tickets cost themselves in order for me to get them. It was disrespectful and showed that they don’t care about their customers.
If you’re going to go to a JFL show, I would suggest buying the tickets in person beforehand, or somehow getting someone to stay at your door every day from 9 am to 5 pm to accept a Purolator package on your behalf.

I love Montréal. I have been there twice now and both in July so have been spared the awful snowy cold winters they are accustomed to in North North America. The first time I went was for Jazz fest. How can you not love that? Free outdoor music in a beautiful city.
The second time I went was this past July. I went to this festival and a show hosted by Russell Peters. The theater was too large and the show pretty average for the overpriced tickets we paid for.

Disclaimer: I never actually saw any of the comedy shows.
I’m rating based on what the festival offered outside of the shows themselves, out on the street, for free.
I was staying just about a block away from one end of where the streets were blocked off for Just For Laugh’s evening activities, so I spent nearly every night of my visit wandering around there. I’m not sure quite what it was about this spectacle itself – perhaps it was in addition to the lovely weather and beer as well – but the atmosphere was unavoidably cheery. Just a plethora of fun things to look at (e.g., Burning Man-​esque mechanical insect vehicles and random creatures on stilts), unique musical acts (I think that hearing a techno version of the Mario Bros theme made my life complete), and other fun activities. All outdoors and open to the public.
It’s not really that large, but was certainly enjoyable. Perhaps next time I can actually catch one of the hundreds of acts.