Jimmy Carr: Making People Laugh

Never one to miss a trick, Jimmy Carr's perennial release arrives like clockwork on the cusp of the silly season, cashing in on those who have paid to see him throughout his seemingly never-ending tour parting with their money once more.

Whilst one can hardly criticise Carr for his Woody Allen-like continual output, this most recent DVD smacks hugely of milking the proverbial money cow once too often. What is slightly baffling once the show proper starts is the assertion by Carr that comedy is not the new rock and roll, yet the menus and Jimmy’s entrance are backed with the Arctic Monkeys’ ‘I Bet You Look Good On The Dance Floor’ and the establishing shots of Glasgow's Armadillo, where the piece is filmed as the crowds arrive, reverberate with the Black Eyed Peas’ ‘I Gotta Feeling’.

Carr's act has always been about adroit one-liners and suffice to say the holy cows are suitably brought to the altar to the delight of the locals, with Paisley being tarred as obviously a rougher suburb of the town. Easy targets to the captive audience such as scouse jobs, Irish repatriation, Scottish tightness, Welsh road-signs and fat kids propensity for Gregg’s are all suitably served up.

A slightly strange tic that Carr has developed is his wont to laugh at his own jokes, something rarely seen on his earlier releases and whilst he compares himself to Elmo being tickled or a seal sexually molested, a heckler nails it admirably by shouting that he sounds more like a sexual predator. What's perhaps most distressing is that a vast amount of this release is given over to him sitting behind a desk doing a glorified PowerPoint presentation of his jokes supported by cartoons; whilst at times undoubtedly funny, the cutaways to slightly bemused looking Glaswegians are telling.

The extras put some more meat on the bones: more desk antics reveal a lot of the Royal Family jokes which would never be allowed on the version that will inevitably air on late-night TV. Carr's Just For Laughs appearances from 2003, 2006, 2007 are welcome (note 2003's plumper Jimmy), though the trailer for the festival is not. However, the "Meet And Greet" extra of Jimmy signing autographs for the faithful who are obviously nearly all paralytic is painful, though a paean to his professionalism.



Released on DVD on 8th November 2010 by 4DVD.

> Buy the DVD on Amazon.

Reviewed by Simon Cole.