The human inhuman is back, along with his jokes, in the latest version of his one man party. The night opened with a rather funny PowerPoint addressing the audience directly (Holy Grail style, good move), pointing out you could be watching Russel Crowe as Robin Hood instead (‘that’s 30 odd foot of Yes Please’).
It was a cracking beginning, but when Jimmy did explode forth he make several jokes about how overlong it was. It was really quite short, but such is the attention span and go-go-energy of JJ-E that it must have been an eternity. It’s this hurricane sugar rush style that is the backbone and Achilles heel of his act: at such a hell bound pace on such a likable guy you can’t help but raise a smile, it’s a knee-jerk response, but a spray-gun approach lacks focus and I feel any real substance to his jokes. His jokes hit like paper-wads: mildly dirty, barely impacting and annoyingly childish.
‘Justin Bieber is so young, more like just out of beaver’.
Every joke leads to Jimmy’s forte, the absurd act out (sometimes inspired like his surprisingly revealing drum and bass raving granny, other times just loopy like his William Wallace hair follicle). And does his crass stereotypes have to included ‘retards’? It was comparatively mild but it really threw me. Another complaint, well actually more of a query, was many of these jokes I heard when I encountered the scene all those years ago. He’s had several shows since then, was this a ‘best of’ and I wasn’t aware? The show IS called When Jokes Strike Back, a sub-plot involving his ‘poorly told’ jokes getting their revenge. This was a good story and, although rather underused, it did add a much needed linear structure (I don’t think anything as calm and collected as segues occur to Jimmy).
This review has been rather more negative then I hoped, it could just be my opinion (google him, he’s very popular). Jimmy is talented at improvisation, characterisation, physical comedy and operating the loop pedal (every time he stuffed it up it was funny, and he once created a hand on my heart amazing Arabian desert soundscape). Also, this I was lucky enough to be at the same performance as Jimmy’s mother and step dad in the front row, despite the raging inappropriateness of some of the jokes (some especially about the two of them). And I can’t pass up the opportunity to point out the poster is great (each of those pictures really do correspond to his jokes, many not appearing in the show! One for the long time fans).
Its entirely possible that big baby face has never held an ill thought in its life, and cautioning him to change his ways would be denying his true personality and skills. I just felt, to be brutally honest, that I was watching a second-banana warm up guy for an hour.