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

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..

I am not overly familiar with comedian Jimmy Carr, but I do know of him. When I stumbled upon this 2016 stand-up comedy special on Netflix in 2022, of course I opted to watch it.

Now, ironically then the show is titled "Jimmy Carr: Funny Business", however I have to say that the funny business is up for interpretation. Now, I get that everyone have a different sense of comedy, and I have to say that this 2016 special sort of fell short of providing me with much of laughter or entertainment.

There was no red thread throughout the course of the show, as Jimmy Carr was essentially just randomly blasting off jokes left and right, switching theme every other second. That was a little bit annoying for me, because I felt like I would get equally much out of just type in "jokes" on Google.

Something that astounded me in "Jimmy Carr: Funny Business" was the way that comedian Jimmy Carr is lashing out at the audience without any sense of filter or sense of when to stop. It was toe-curling at times to watch him dish out personal attacks against members of the audience.

Sure, a good amount of the jokes were actually funny, but without a proper red thread to guide the show, then it was essentially just 62 minutes of random jokes pulled from a hat, laced with some behavior that certainly felt like overstepping a line to me.

After having seen "Jimmy Carr: Funny Business", then I am not really feeling prompted to rush out to get to watch more of Jimmy Carr's material.

My rating of "Jimmy Carr: Funny Business" lands on a three out of ten stars.

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.

My early memories of Jimmy Carr are that he was consistently offensive and crude, often uncomfortably so. While his latest stand up is both of these, I don't feel he is as edgy as he used to be. Don't get me wrong, he is much more offensive than your average stand-up comedian I just feel he has curbed it slightly.

He has a knack of dividing audiences; he is very much a love him or hate him kind of comedian. His approach to jokes is to appear very sensitive and then follow it up with a crude punchline. He is consistently good at this, making the build up to each joke tense, as you know he is about to produce something that will make you laugh but at the same time make you cringe!

Jimmy Carr has a history of performing to small audiences, despite being a big enough name to sell out arenas, he chooses to do smaller, intimate gigs to interact with the audience on a more personal level. Funny Business is no different; he often uses the audience, involving them in jokes and embarrassing them. He has a section where he shares jokes with the crowd which the audience have sent in themselves and also invites the crowd to openly heckle him, this is easily one of the funniest parts of the show.

If you like previous Jimmy Carr stand ups, you will enjoy this – there is no question about that. It's shorter than most gigs with a run time of around 60 minutes, I would have liked for it to be a little longer as it really did fly by. Some of his jokes don't quite hit the mark for me, but when they do, they do so really well. He's crude, edgy and offensive, if you're easily offended, don't bother watching this. Thankfully, I'm not, so for me it was a solid show – not his best, yet still comfortably above average.

7/10