Ricky Gervais - your time is most certainly up!!! Dregging the very bottom of the humour barrel (Ricky Gervais Live 3 - Fame (DVD))

Member Name: sparkymarky1973

Product:	Ricky Gervais Live 3 - Fame (DVD)
Date:	20/09/08 (95 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Well it's mercifully short but theres very little to reccommend here if anything

Disadvantages: In very very very bad taste-don't watch if easily offended

The other night, this was on the telly on channel 4 and, having watched both his other two stand-up shows before (ANIMALS and POLITICS) and having found them both reasonably funny, I thought I might as well give this a go. Of his three shows this is without doubt the weakest and, 24 hours later, I am left kind of wondering why I really bothered sitting down to watch this. Much of it was in bad taste with only the odd comic moment and, in fact, the show has very much left me feeling almost dirty with it's ill choice of humour.

Now don't get me wrong- I'm no prude and I like a sick joke as much as anyone. Well I remember the jokes that emerged after the death of Princess Diana and other such incidents and plenty of them I have also gone on to share. But when Ricky starts off with taking the mickey out of young sufferers of cancer, then I begin to wonder if perhaps Mr.Gervais has crossed one line too far. I, like many other people I suspect, have lost members of both my family and extended family to cancer and don't really consider it a laughing manner- certainly not to the extent of calling kids who have lost their hair through radiography "bald little b******s". This I consider to be both heartless and in very very bad taste. As if this isn't enough, Ricky then goes on to attack sufferers of M.E....

Long mis-understood and mis-diagnosed, I have little doubt that Gervais realises the damage he does by mocking in a very public venue an illness that has struggled just to be recognized as what it is- a deterioating disease thart seriously affects people's lives. At one stage, Gervais coments that "there is a fine line between me becoming Jim Davidson" But even Davidson is better known for his tact on certain subjects than our Ricky who seems in this show determined to offend as many people and as wide a spectrum, as he can.

Previously I have always quite liked Gervais. I thought THE OFFICE was a tad over-rated but enjoyable nonetheless and EXTRAS had it's share of moments though the last Xmas special did nothing for the show and there were plenty of scenes in the series that were highly cringe-worthy. (Les Dennis anyone...?) But this latest stand-up show was, at times, beyond cringe-worthy and merely uncomfortable as you weren't sure whether or not you were supposed to be laughing. It seems to me that this show exhibits a comedian who has been given waaaay too many awards for a barely more than mediocre career and a man whose ego has expanded to the point where he believes foolishly that he can get away with saying anything. A fellow reviewer compares Gervais to a Bernard Manning for our generation and that is not a million miles away but Manning never had an ego this big.

In his defence, I have seen Gervais on chat shows following this tour and he does have a defence. Gervais claims that the views he expresses are not nessecarily his own but that when he does stand-up he delvelops an extremist character who behaves and says the things we would never dream of saying much like a more extreme example of the character he played in THE OFFICE. I am not convinced that this is in any way any justification for offending a group of people- I don't mean it I'm just being ironic doesn't really cut the mustard. Also I'm not 100% convinced that this is true anyway and that the views he expresses aren't genuine sometimes and that his defence is merely a way of making those views acceptable and hiding his true feelings behind the guise of a risque comedian.

Considering also that the theme of this latest "lecture" too is FAME, there doesn't seem to be much connection here with it's subject title. It's like me writing a review for chocolate hob-nobs but putting it in the computer section of reviews.

Again as other people have been quick to point out, the joke here sems to be o the people who have come to see him or those who have bought the DVD. The whole show feels very self-indulgent and Gervais comes over as smug and overbearing- "look at me, look at me" he seems to be saying, "I've won lots of awards and can get away with saying all sorts of naughty things- aren't I outrageous"..... err no Ricky...you're a t**t!!

Its such a shame really that Gervais feels that mocking those less fortunate than himself is the only way for him to get a laugh. All comics do this to a certain respect it's true but Gervais might as well here be the character he was in EXTRAS when he gave a homeless guy twenty quid then said "Don't suppose theres any chance of me getting any change..."

This feels as though we are getting to see a glimmer of the real Gervais here and if we're not then why would he want to portray himself as such an obnoxious person? This attempt at ill-intentioned humour harks right back to his debut on THE ELEVEN O'CLOCK SHOW and he was only just barely amusing then. Here you can't help thinking that Gervais could do much better than this and very little effort has been put in on his behalf. Like I say I by no means a prude and have often been criticised by my wife as having a sick sense of humour so for me to feel offended by this show gives some indication as to just how close to the knuckle he sails. Seeing as my wife lost her step-dad to cancer this year, I am only glad that she was upstairs for the beginning and missed much of the cancer "jokes". What she did hear disgusted her and it was only because we have both watched him before and sen him much funnier than this that we stuck through it to the end. Still like I say, this has left me feeling sullied and dirty 24 hours later and the more I think about it, the less funny the show now seems....
If you are a big Gervais fan, then nothing I have said here is likely to persuade you not to watch this. But think on this- if you buy this DVD, you might just contribute to the industry giving him another award and, at the very least, you will be putting even more money in Gervais' pocket and at the end of the day, it's Ricky Gervais who will be laughing all the way to the bank and if there's something that an audience really shouldn't put up with then it's the last laugh being on them....

Summary: Read my review-this is NOT like any of his other shows, in fact this is highly offensive