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I watch a lot of stand-up and have seen this happen to live performers too - Eddie Izzard most notably. I have begun to wonder if what happens is that at some point comedians lose their fear. When they become too comfortable, too secure about what will make the audience laugh, then the edge vanishes, the danger goes and the laughs dry up with it. With a live audience the feedback is immediate and irrefutable: the thunderous silence of no chortling. When your audience is remote perhaps it takes longer to realise what has happened.
I agree about Woody Allen's Match Point, what a face-itchingly, embarrassingly, bad film. In the UK, where its cultural faux pas were glaringly evident, it was rightly, roundly dismissed. In his case though I do think that he has been handicapped by a desire for the respect that is too often accorded to gravitas and not to levitas. And boo to that.
