Jimmy Carr: Funny Business

Two basic characteristics of Jimmy Carr are totally moronic laughter, which is impossible to get used to, and pushing the boundaries of offensive to infinity. This man not only picks topics that most people would not touch with a two-meter stick, but also manages to turn the things that you never thought could be offensive into total shockers. Just when you think that this does not get any worse he proves you wrong. Jimmy Carr always can make it worse. Most of the performance I couldn't manage to laugh because my jaw was hanging open in disbelief. I do not know how this man is not afraid for his very life. His picture should be in the dictionaries next to the word "offensive", because this man manages to push the limits of offensiveness to absolutely any topic that could come to your mind.

9/10

Properly laugh out loud funny, Jimmy's quick wit ruthlessly ruins members of the audience.

A show from Jimmy Carr is always good or at least I never saw a bad one. Funny Business is the typical Jimmy Carr show like we're used to from him, one-line jokes, politically non-correct, interacting with the audience. It's small inappropriate jokes, no time to rest, joke after joke. His intercating with the audience shows again that he's not afraid of confrontation, he even encourages it, and when you have a wannabe smartass (in this show a guy called Rack or some stupid name like that) that tries to ridicule him he'll just demolishes you with his funny comebacks. The guy Rack made a fool out of himself so his lesson should be that he'd better shut up the next time he tries to be the hero. Jimmy Carr, you either love him or you hate him, count me in the first category.

Jimmy Carr has been described as "the hardest working man in comedy" but apparently didn't seem to have put much original effort into his latest show Funny Business which came across more like a best-of than anything else.

With a timid crowd today in the Netherlands, Carr just seemed to be working through his routine, offering little in the way of freshness or unexpected pun. With at least a quarter of the jokes coming from previous shows, Carr failed to impress his audience with his all heard before routines and curious lack of oomph. Especially his patented laugh, ordinarily a source of amusement, seemed off timed and calculated which added to the staleness of the performance.

It was especially the second part of the show that failed to impress; jokes were often either something he already did or an obvious variation of them. As a result, the audience didn't seem too eager to offer him the heckles he could work with. Some were so painfully terrible, even Carr must have noticed he simply wasn't reaching us with his rehashed material.

Truly disappointing..

If you get easily offended, you won't like this show. If you sometimes get offended, you won't like this show. If you never get offended, you'll absolutely love this show.

Jimmy Carr is a notorious divider of audiences. With his jokes he severely pushes the limits of ethics and morality, and makes jokes of subjects that most other comedians (even in today's society) wouldn't even touch with an iron rod. And for the most parts of the show this approach works brilliantly.

I'm not generally a big fan of stand up comedians that uses explicit sexual contents as a basis of their stand up routine. Mostly because I find that jokes on the subject usually's delivered in a very crude and unsophisticated manner. But Jimmy Carr manages to turn a simple sex joke that normally would be used for shocking effect and cheap laughs into comedy art. His confidence and timing is just that good.

In this routine he involves the audience quite a bit via his amazing observational comedy, which he is very well known for in Britain. He asks audience members a bunch of mundane questions and perceives to destroy them after receiving their answers. Perhaps not very original, but nevertheless very amusing. He also does a bit where he includes the audience in a way that I for one haven't seen before. I won't reveal the gimmick in this review, other than to say it worked fantastically and made me laugh out loud.

Personally I've never much enjoyed heckling in stand up routines, and Jimmy has quite a big segment in the show devoted to it. This was the only part of the show that really didn't work for me. Not because of Jimmy's abilities to cope with the material being thrown at him, but rather that people in the audience only shouted stuff where the only correct response would be: "something, something 'Your mom!'". And for the most parts that was what his response was.

All in all a very entertaining show, good for loads of laughs. I think I can say with a fair amount of certainty: You'll either love or hate this show. I, for one, loved it.