A Brilliant Conflict

The performances transcend the film's tropes, grounding it in characters that feel more complete than this subgenre often produces.

It’s not bad or unwatchable but despite the amplitude of the spectacle, the end result is underwhelming.

Blistering performances.

Animals is very good, Politics is alright, and Fame is good, this was the fourth stand-up show for the successful writer and star of great shows and films, such as The Office, Extras, The Invention of Lying, The Ricky Gervais Show and Derek. Ricky Gervais performs to an audience at the HMV Hammersmith Apollo in London, with a show based on the theme of science. The majority of the jokes are based on this theme, of course he leaves room to delve into other subjects, including about Kerry Katona, Susan Boyle on Britain's Got Talent, religion and The Bible, Noah's Ark, sexuality, political, obesity, swearing and offense and rational thought. Gervais started his career playing versions of himself and characters that are perceived as annoying bastards, he does continue this persona on stage, and it works fantastically well, this is a terrific funny show. Ricky Gervais was number 49 on The Comedians' Comedian, he was number 18 on Britain's Favourite Comedian, and he was number 11 on 100 Greatest Stand-Ups. Very good!

Comparing this to Animals (his first stand-up) there are perhaps the same number of segments but the number of lines, particularly throwaway, seem far fewer. It makes the pace seem slower, the build-up longer, and now the similarly sized punchlines unable to match. Most disappointingly tho, there is a more aggressive, mean-spirited edge to the first half of the show which doesn't really work. I think Gervais' portrayal of a certain innocence makes so much of his stuff, particularly his religious deconstructions, work so well that the nasty edge doesn't really play for me. The themes of homosexuality, fatness and religion are present in both Animals and this in such a way that this seem repetitive. All in all, watch Animals and forget about this one.

Gervais is possibly the best stand-up comedian I have ever seen. His take on fat people is side-splittingly funny, and his hilarious deconstruction of the Bible would have made Mark Twain proud.But this review isn't intended to glorify the obvious brilliance of Ricky's comedy. It's about how true his self-professed devotion to science truly is (given that he proudly labels himself a "liberal") – and just how much of an atheist he really is; I shall look into that too.Science needs to be embraced in all its beauty and ugliness. What liberals do (just like the Christian Right) is to pick and choose the science facts that suit them, while discarding and conveniently ignoring all scientific data that points towards truths that they consider unacceptable because they batter their fanciful, idealistic notions of humankind and society. Marxism (in which much of U.S. liberalism is deeply rooted), after all, clashes head-on with science on a number of issues, contradicting even entire fields of sciences in its very essence. Being both a Marxist and a Darwinist is like being "a religious atheist": mutually exclusive, totally impossible. Darwin believed in nature shaping us, not us shaping nature (and ourselves). Left-wingers have the arrogance and the foolishness to insist that man can re-shape both society and his world in a way that suits him, fairly swiftly even, rather than accept the ugly truth that nature sets very clear limits on what can and what cannot be altered or achieved by mere fallible mortals. Liberals, like Marxists, ignore the big picture science has to offer.Liberals use science usually when they can batter religious belief with it, and that's only because religious institutions are the arch-enemy (apart from Capitalism) of the Left. To any careful observer Marxism in itself represents a new religion, the only difference being that its followers detest that label: Utopia replaces Heaven, there is the belief in achieving total (social) equality all across the board just as Christians preach, there is the fanatical obsession with the poor rising up and ruling the world i.e. the uprising of the proletariat being an obvious rip-off of "the meek shall inherit the Earth" premise, etc. This is nothing new; Bertrand Russell had pointed out to the stark parallels between the two opposing(?) ideologies over half-a-century ago. More unites Marxism and Christianity than separates them. Karl Marx is treated a sort of Messiah, if not God himself; nothing he ever wrote is seriously questioned by his followers (as with any other imaginary (religious) god), and "Das Kapital" becomes in a very real sense the replacement for the Bible, a book so "perfect" that it prevents all criticism amongst its rabid followers. Marxism and its naïve dabbling in PERFECTION: not particularly scientific.So when Ricky says that he believes in science, this is only partly true. He misuses science just as many others had done. When faced with a rock-hard scientific study that goes against any of his foolish and naïve liberal beliefs, Ricky, like any other idealist, simply ignores it, labeling hence dismissing it off-hand as "sexist", "fascist" or whatever other terms of blame-and-shame liberals like to throw around on an almost daily basis against their political opponents, whether deserved or not. For example, offer Gervais the plethora of scientific studies that show that men are more apt in logic and mathematics while women are more gifted in multi-tasking and languages, and Ricky might likely dispute this – without even studying the facts. "Sexist!" Liberals simply ignore anything and everything that gnaws at their shaky belief that everyone everywhere in this vast world is totally equal in every way. They often ignore the obvious, whenever it is "ugly".There is no equality in nature, and certainly no equality to be observed in any group of advanced primates, and yet they so dogmatically insist in total equality among men? This is idealism taken to its extreme, bordering on blind, stark-raving-mad zeal. (In that sense a liberal behaves exactly like a fundamentalist foam-at-the-mouth preacher.) The fanciful belief that equality reigns and/or should reign supreme all across the board (whether it pertains to gender, race, religion, class, etc) is the culmination of the gullibility of their flawed thinking. They have succeeded in rendering many studies in the field of genetics as so taboo that they can't even be funded. So how does that fit in with the liberals' claim that they promote freedom of thought and science? This line of "reasoning" very much suggests that humans are "the Chosen Ones", somehow picked at random in this unconscious universe, yet somehow destined to achieve equality that normally only exists in fairy tales. Irrational, over-optimistic idealism is found in equal amounts in religions and Socialism; both are equally guilty of dismissing truths (i.e. science) in favour of whatever hallucinogenic scenario their wishful thinking imposes on them. Hence why most atheists are nothing but closet Marxists, hence not true atheists, only wannabe atheists.The plain/sad truth of the matter is that the vast majority of people cannot stand to face reality and all of its harsh indifference. I would submit that around nearly all people suffer from this "cosmic insecurity" – essentially a result of our mortality hence inability to cope with the idea of death; this bludgeons our powers of reasoning. Nothing destroys logic and common sense like fear - precisely why nearly everyone needs a crutch in life, i.e. opts for one or the other: either religion or Marxism (or at least liberalism). These provide security blankets to the unstable, fearful and confused human mind, offering the unrealistic/absurd promise of eventual bliss and some kind of childish Robin-Hoodian equality.In other words, Gervais isn't nearly the level-headed grounded-in-reality science-worshiping intellectual that he fancies himself as. I want to ask him about organic food, genetically-modified crops: another area in which the Left behave like panicky doom-bringers, basing their opposition to this revolutionary area of science on nothing but anti-scientific emotionalism.

STAR RATING: ***** Saturday Night **** Friday Night *** Friday Morning ** Sunday Night * Monday Morning Almost exactly a year to the DVD release, I had to see Science, Gervais's latest live show, in what I think was one of the test shows before he polished it up and took it nationwide. All the material in this DVD release was exactly the same as I remembered it, so it looks like he pretty much had it sorted when I went to see him.The title, as it would imply, revolves around the concept of 'Science' which, Ricky tells us, can be used to find the cure for deadly diseases or create something like the atom bomb. But Gervais, with his trademark cutting humour, informs us that in fact this was a perfect example of science going right. Like the other three releases before this, it pretty much veers off this theme for a lot of the show, but the humour is still fairly consistent in it's style and delivery through out.By a fourth instalment, you may think the format may have lost it's edge a bit and it all may be sagging, but it seems as if Gervais was cutting his teeth with his first three stand up efforts and building it all up to his most accomplished effort, which he has with this more polished and slick show, which just comes off altogether as his most watchable and fulfilling entry. Certainly not for those easily offended or who just can't stand him, but what you've been waiting for for everyone else. ****