Another Hilarious Bout Of Observational Comedy
Now onto his sixth comedy special, Jim Gaffigan returns with another hilarious dose of observational comedy. With a cleverly thought out set and some surprisingly profound home-truths, Jim delivers a great hour of stand-up, despite a slight dip in the middle portion of the routine. When it comes to observational comedy, regardless of comic there’s always something you can relate to and find funny. Through a mixture of self-aware bad accents, quirky mannerisms and smartly written analogies, Jim Gaffigan turns the ordinary, mundane topics and turns them into comedy gold. Beginning with his wife’s tumor, Jim continues on to talk about hospitals, the Asian culture, British people and even The Pope. There’s a confident ebb and flow to a lot of the material too and the way Jim seamlessly changes from one topic to the next is seamless, keeping the momentum going without missing a beat. Jim constantly references the audience here too, regularly putting on a high-pitched voice to echo sentiments from the crowd. Most of this springing from a recurring joke about the dentist. It’s a cleverly worked segment too and works two fold – one to break up the observational comedy and the other to change subjects with a bit of a stop gap between them. With no shots of the audience or fancy camera work to speak of, Noble Ape predominantly keeps a solitary, static camera focused on the stage for the duration of the show. This works really well to avoid any distractions and keep the focus on the comedy although a few close-up shots do allow for a bit of editing, mainly during the light segments of physical comedy used to accentuate the jokes. If you’ve never seen Jim Gaffigan’s stand-up material before, Noble Ape is a great show to dive into. Despite some recycled material from previous shows, Jim does well to showcase some genuinely funny jokes here. The observational comedy is good, peppered with light elements of physical and toilet humour to keep things feeling lighthearted. Although the middle of the show does lose a little momentum, it’s a minor point in an otherwise highly enjoyable stand-up well worth checking out.
