Rodney Villanueva

He was the Master of Ceremonies for the Amy Hanaiali’i and Willie K concert at the Hawaii Theater. He was extremely funny. He was almost even better than the musical performance.

Keep looking. Thumbs down. Look for a real professional, not a fool.
This guy MC’d a birthday party for our grand nephew last month in Mililani and he was a huge disappointment and it was pretty embarrassing how unfunny he was. He seemed drunk.
He made fun of the birthday boy’s name. Yeah, he ridiculed a 1-​year-​old. Classy guy.
Instead of introducing the hosts, their family, and special guests like he was supposed to, he brought our young sons up on stage and «interviewed them», ridiculing their answers and they way they spoke (we live on the mainland.) It made everyone uncomfortable and made me very angry. The hostess (nephew’s mom) finally had to go up to the stage and tell him to knock it off. The guy seems to have a problem with mainlanders. He was one insult away from having a real problem on his hands. You don’t insult kids! He’s lucky that my family is very easy-​going and forgiving.
He also made some creepy remarks on stage about the hostess’ mom who is attractive and off-​stage about some of the other women in my family. He pretty much ruined the party for us and I imagine a lot of others. He needs to be taught some manners.
The hostess went to a lot of trouble to create a program and a timeline of events, which this guy didn’t follow at all. For example, there were activities for the kids that he was suppose to announce. He never did. As a result, the kid’s didn’t get to play games, and receive gift books.

Hired Rodney for my wedding one week ago. He was hilarious. All of our guests enjoyed him. Friends and family commented later on how great he was. His material is completely improvised which is what we wanted. Yes, he made a lot of jokes about the wedding, my fiancé and I, friends, family, etc, which is why we hired him. He’s a great entertainer and excellent improviser! Again, this is why we chose him; we wanted some off-​color jokes and lots of energy. If you’re not into that and want something more structured, then let him know that, I’m sure he’ll work with whatever you want. But if you want your guests to laugh the entire night, and save money on other entertainment since he’ll keep the audience entertained the entire night, then I suggest booking him.

I know that a lot of people probably think that Rodney Villanueva is a great entertainer… however, we had a very, very bad experience with him. I am hoping that this review will also help him out.
We heard great things about Rodney and saw some Unilocal reviews, so we decided to hire him as an emcee for our party. We were totally shocked to see how unprofessional he was. We had texted him to confirm his time that we were hiring him for.
First of all, he arrived one hour late and said that he thought we had told him he was suppose to come at 11, when our text had 10 am on it. Then he went on an ego trip and tried to tell us how busy he was and how he was really booked — we didn’t care how busy he was, we just wanted him to do his job. We had to ad lib for an hour because of his tardiness. Then, to add insult to injury, he didn’t have the decency to apologize for being late and instead, went straight to the food table and made a plate to eat! I don’t know of any professional entertainer that does this… usually, you do your job and then the host/​hostess will invite you to eat!
His jokes were not really funny and he made a lot of ethnic jokes about Samoans… not being sensitive that the next entertainers that were coming up were from a halau that had a lot of Samoans… now, i know that it is okay to do ethnic jokes, but i think that he should have been more sensitive and professional about it.
The icing on the cake was that afterwards, he approached the the mother of the girl that he was emceeing for and asked, «Where is your other half?». When she answered that she didn’t have one, he proceeded to ask why such a hot woman like her didn’t have one (none of his business… it was a very sore point for her), and then said that she should go out with someone like him; that he would be a barrel of laughs for her… why on earth would he do this at a gig? he followed her around and tried to make conversation, and continued to put the mac on her, probably not even aware of how uncomfortable and upset she was with him about being late, unprofessional, etc., and now hitting on her. She was so uncomfortable that she went to others in the party to help her avoid any further conversations with him, yet he still tried to hang around to talk to her.
I hope he takes this review to heart… it is not meant to insult him… it is meant to give others information so they can make an informed decision when selecting entertainers. I hope he makes sure that he is 1) on time or even better, comes in a little earlier (would be nice if he can scope out the place and see what the environment is like so he wouldn’t be doing anything silly like insulting Samoans who are part of the entertainment); 2) Be prepared to eat after his gig; 3) Keep his gig professional and not hit on any ladies; 4) Take the time to apologize… maybe you may think that you are either a big star and don’t need to, or maybe you thought you were right, but business sense should tell you to always be humble and apologize if you sense something went wrong.