Jimmy Carr: Natural Born Killer

I cannot profess to being the biggest fan of Jimmy Carr, nonetheless as his new Netflix special, Natural Born Killer was available I decided to give it a watch.

As likely as not I have not watched anything by Jimmy since his previous special His Dark Material in 2021.

Well, aside from laughing out loud around three or maybe four times, this was thin gruel, it really felt like he was trying very, very hard to be offensive and funny, and ended up being neither to any great extent.

It just did not work for me.

The show almost settles into two halves as around or just beyond the half-way point and with the aid of the audience Jimmy seems to loosen up, it becomes more fluid and is a bit funnier all be it in a comparative sense.

I felt for the audience who I presume had paid good money to see this, it felt that they just weren't that into it, maybe it was just one of those nights but this Aylesbury audience did not seem to be having the best of times.

I guess it is mildly amusing to see Jimmy's face, teeth and hair evolve over time all with the aid of modern surgery and dentistry but beyond that there is little to recommend here.

Jimmy needs to have a long hard think about his future career or there may not be much career in his future.

I am someone who follows foreign standups almost only on Netflix. Jimmy Carr has his own offensive humor. When I searched for something similar, I couldn't find it, at least not on Netflix. There was no one who gave me the feeling of "You couldn't have really said that" as much as this man. In this show, I don't know if it was Netflix, Carr's advancing age, or the current structure of society, I felt like he wasn't using his punches fully and was holding back. There were a few positive messages squeezed in that you sometimes come across in standups. I wonder if this was a Netflix commission or the artist's own choice. It made me laugh out loud in a few places, but I'd like to see a Jimmy Carr getting filthy beyond comprehension.

I do generally enjoy the somewhat edgy comedy that Jimmy Carr delivers. And thus I needed no persuasion to sit down and watch this 2024 stand-up comedy special.

Sure, I had not heard about it, prior to stumbling upon it by perusing the stand-up comedy collection on Netflix, but still I had some expectations to the show, as Jimmy Carr usually delivers good stuff.

And I will say that the 2024 show "Jimmy Carr: Natural Born Killer" definitely is an enjoyable and entertaining show to watch. Jimmy Carr does what he does best, so it is either a take it or leave it situation, I guess. Either you like his edgy material or you don't, as he easily can offend those with frail levels of tolerance and a lack of humor.

I was genuinely entertained throughout the course of the 59 minutes that the show ran for. And if you are a fan of Jimmy Carr, then you definitely will enjoy this 2024 show.

My rating of "Jimmy Carr: Natural Born Killer" lands on a six out ten stars.

I'm generally a fan of Jimmy Carr but Natural Born Killer is just awful. It reeks of a desperation to be 'edgy' and puts more focus on seeking to offend than it does to be funny.

Don't get me wrong, there are funny moments, but they are too few and far between to rescue the performance.

The number of times that he seemingly had to prompt the audience to laugh was embarrassing. I really wanted to enjoy the show and I fought through the want to turn off after 15 minutes...how I now wish I'd have taken that option...

Jimmy seems to have become the offensive, out of touch, creepy uncle who only seems able to entertain himself. Sad & disappointing.

This stand-up special by Jimmy Carr is the first time I have not enjoyed his work. I do not mean that his jokes were not funny. On the contrary, I found much of the material to be pretty good, not his best, but pretty good. Even so, I emitted no more than a chuckle throughout the show. That is because the camera work in this is unprecedented, and not in a good way.

Every so often the camera operator would repeat a moving shot of Jimmy by coming in from the side of the stage, all in for a close-up of him talking and then continue passing all the way across in front of him, followed by circling behind him.

I found this pointless continual movement so distracting that it made me utterly lose track of the topics and not even hear what he was saying. I cannot recall ever seeing this before in any stand-up special ever, by anyone. This began early in the routine and was repeatedly used all the to the end. I found it so off-putting that the only time I laughed was when I was not actually looking at the screen.

My main emotional response was not laughter, but rather feeling bad for his audience in the theater. I wonder how they remained in a humorous mood when I can only imagine they were having their show spoiled by absurd camerawork being performed directly in their line of sight. I would love to know about why this approach was used and the chain of poor judgment that allowed it to happen. It must be utterly bizarre or tragically pathetic.

Thank you for reading this.