NEW YORK, April 16 — The amiable documentary “Knock Knock, It’s Tig Notaro,” which has its premiere Friday on Showtime, is a you-had-to-be-there kind of experience. A twist on the usual tour movie, it features Notaro travelling the country and doing her stand-up in people’s homes. Clearly it would have been great to be sitting with your friends in that living room or that backyard a few feet away from the comedian (and her film crew). Watching others have that experience isn’t quite the same thing.

To be fair, there’s quite a bit more to the 76-minute documentary than what we see of Notaro and her driver and opening act, John Dorne, doing their routines. (It’s a quirk of the film that Dorne’s material, heavy on wordplay, comes off better than Notaro’s drier, more cerebral work.) We see the videos submitted by people asking Notaro to come to their homes, and we see the locals’ excited preparations for the shows. And there’s a fair bit of road-movie filler — Notaro and Dorne getting on each other’s nerves in the car, or visiting a junk shop where their best find is soiled underwear.

Notaro, who writes for “Inside Amy Schumer” and has acted in “Transparent” and “The Sarah Silverman Show,” is probably best known for incorporating her 2012 breast cancer diagnosis into her comedy. Her health problems, which have included a serious intestinal disorder, are woven through the film. Midtour she begins to feel abdominal pain and ends up in the hospital.

There are clearly larger ideas at play in “Knock Knock, It’s Tig Notaro,” having to do with healing and human contact and getting back to roots, that don’t quite come into focus. The meta-Americana of Notaro and Dorne’s travels can be amusing or it can be awkward and slightly condescending.

The film’s memorable bits come not from performance but from the serendipity of the road: Notaro snapping “Google me” to an unimpressed tollbooth worker, or browsing a roadside tombstone display, where she tells the proprietor: “I’ve had some health issues lately. Just want to be smart. Think ahead.” — New York Times