COMEDY REVIEW : In Search of Laughs in Talent Contest at Improv : Eight entrants kept the jokes coming, but what they couldn’t deliver was a point of view.

You had to feel for the eight comedians who took the stage for the Johnny Walker National Comedy Search on Wednesday night at the Improv. Playing to a hypercritical industry crowd--including Milton Berle, who sat in the center of the room looking pained by everyone he saw--couldn’t have been easy. Still, it offered a chance to look in on what was being said in one of the last and most immediate forms of live cultural address.

John Henton of Detroit, lean and stylish with an understated manner, mentioned how three states wouldn’t honor Martin Luther King Day and concluded, “You gotta be real prejudiced not to take a day off from work.” Most of the rest of his mediocre material focused on pop music and rock stars. But he won the contest, and $25,000.

Virtually all of the finalists, each of whom represented a different city, were personable and engaging. Some had more technique than others. Some were more sophisticated. Some were comical on sight, such as Chicago’s Steve McGrew, a native Oklahoman who looked like Martin Sheen done up in Lyle Lovett’s electroshock hairstyle, or L.A.’s Max Alexander, hitching up stone-washed Levi’s that could have accommodated a catamaran. Detroit’s O’Brien & Valdez were impeccable in their timing and sound effects (particularly their prairie morning as observed by John Wayne, Walter Brennan and Charles Bronson).

What no one had was a point of view. Over the the last 15 years, the club scene has become so insular that only a few standard topics have emerged as endlessly recycled topical references. They include airline jokes and jokes about one’s appearance, dating, being newly married, fast food emporiums like McDonald’s, pop stars, gays, warmed-over allusions to political figures as well as occasional xenophobic remarks on the Middle East.

Michael Sullivan-Irwin, a hefty figure representing New York, talked about airline controllers, toilets and parking spaces for the handicapped, censorship and condoms for Catholics (he also tried to make a comparison between Domino’s pizzas and the anti-abortion movement that did not go over well).

San Francisco’s Greg Proop followed with some clever material (“ ‘Desert Storm’ should really have been called ‘The Bob Hope-Exxon Desert Classic’ ”) but probably hurt his chances by not realizing that drug references don’t play in the new puritanical Hollywood.

Joseph Marlotti of Miami bombed by playing up Catholicism and male sexism--his act recalled Long Island of the early ‘70s. McGrew (this observer’s favorite) played up his corny Oklahoma roots and made stale stuff fresh (“The Titanic hit an iceberg; this guy (Exxon Valdez captain) Hazelwood hit a state !”).

The skill of Boston’s Wendy Leibman wasn’t in her ordinary material, it was in her ironic pickups (“I love Johnny Walker. I only drank it once--at my parents’ wedding.”). But contests don’t reward irony.

L.A.’s schleppy Alexander told fat jokes on himself (“I worked out on a rowing machine. I sank.”). O’Brien & Valdez were clever but perhaps came on in the wrong slot, or lacked socko material (Valdez, who is blind: “How does the crowd look?” O’Brien: “A burger short of a happy meal.”).

Who will emerge as truly the best? Time is the best critic.