Ricky Gervais: Armageddon Review – A Controversial Look at Political Correctness and Hypersensitivity

Gunter Van Assche focuses on infinity. Today: Ricky Gervais: Armageddon

Gunter Van AsscheDecember 28, 2023, 4:00 PM

“I suddenly thought of a joke, but I actually can’t make it.” With visible anticipation you see Ricky Gervais teasing and cheering the audience in his latest Netflix special Ricky Gervais: Armageddon. “It’s actually too offensive.” That last word apparently works like catnip on his spy head. The audience braces itself and waits, wringing its hands, for the final blow. The joke is coming anyway, you know that. Gervais is therefore not a comedian who likes to weigh his words, let alone swallow them.

At that moment the monologue is about pedophilia, so everyone’s ears are red hot. A minute earlier, Gervais demonstrated how, as a child, he would have jerked off an old pedophile if he had promised him a puppy. And then comes the icing on the cake: “There are ten million pedophiles in China. If they promise a puppy to a child, the little one will probably say: I’m not hungry.” A sizzler of a bouncer. You can’t even be confronted. This is just easy comedy. Not smart or sharp.

Gervais’ role as an inveterate rioter, fearing neither god nor commandment, suited him perfectly for years. But today that role, like his black T-shirt and jeans, fits him like a too-tight corset. As Kees van Kooten once said: make sure you never become your own banana peel. After the brilliant, bawdy flamethrower comedy with which Gervais smugly torched Hollywood at the Golden Globes, the British creator of The Office, Extras and After Life today seems like a parody of himself. He presents himself as a “comedian without a filter”, but the inevitable problem is that he also has no sieve to screen out salty wits.

Not that the fans care. Today, Gervais seems to mainly want to serve the flailing outside guard who – eyes raised to heaven, hand pressed to his chest – exclaims that ‘we are really not allowed to say anything more today’. Predictably, he is now once again from the pulpit criticizing political correctness and cancel culture. Admittedly: the selective hypersensitivity, puritanism and narcissism that belong to the worst excesses of woke are of course zum puke. Gervais’ comment on Gen Z snowflakes during a piece about Schindler’s List is incomparably witty. But the dreary self-justification with which he too often serves himself does not suggest a rebel. A dirty uncle who asks with shining eyes after every joke: “Was that about it?” Gervais actually utters those exact words a few times in the performance.

According to the streaming channel, his latest Netflix special offers “a controversial look at political correctness and hypersensitivity in a taboo-breaking comedy special about the end of humanity.” Well! We mainly see a man in his sixties thundering about his tired hobbyhorses. Beforehand you can fill a bingo card with hot topics: ‘animals are better than people’, ‘religion’, ‘jerking’, ‘rape’, ‘dwarfs’ and ‘Holocaust’. Another one to point out: “These are just jokes, I don’t care.” It’s like you’re in a glitch from The Matrix. Almost his entire special feels like déjà vu.

“When I’m dead, you will see that this is brilliant satire,” the comedian pats himself on the back in the show. You involuntarily think of Gervais rushing into the vacuum of air half an hour earlier.

Ricky Gervais: Armageddon is available on Netflix.

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2023-12-28 15:00:54


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