Johnny Vegas: 18 Stone of Idiot Movie Review

They say Ricky Gervais is a one-trick pony and that may be the case, but I like that one trick and to date have enjoyed everything he's done. If a current comedian should be classed as a one trick pony, in my opinion Johnny Vegas is that man. To his credit, what you see is what you get with Vegas, so no-one should be watching this DVD under false expectations. What you might expect however is a vehicle for Vegas to build on the attributes that have got him this far - his “one of the lads” down to earth humour and self deprecation. Unfortunately what we have here is a bizarre concoction - the bastard child of TFI Friday and The Word mixed with the essence of Vegas, but missing the subtlety and humanity that normally counter-balances his over the top side. Whereas his normal act generates some amount of sympathy with the audience, here we have Vegas in full “obnoxious drunk mode”, goading the audience, picking up the baton from shows like Jackass and generally targeting the lowest common denominator.

I didn't watch the TV show when it was broadcast as I'm probably ten years too old to appreciate it anymore - I grew up with The Word, The Girly Show and later TFI Friday - all successful Friday night shows. TFI Friday helped cement Chris Evans as a TV alchemist, turning to gold all he touched. Unfortunately this time round even with his involvement it's distinctly Pyrite (and that's not Cockney rhyming slang!). This DVD has taken a “best of” approach following the structure of one episode but merging the best bits from each episode into one long feature. It is a novel idea but as I didn't see the original broadcast I can't say whether that is because each episode was not deemed good enough to be here in it's entirety or not. What I can say however, is that in my opinion if this was the best the show had to offer then I'm glad each episode wasn't included. Obviously my comments are entirely subjective and you'll know already if you like Johnny Vegas's brand of humour, all I'll say is that this is not Vegas as he has been seen before, this is a Loaded version of Vegas. It's fine if you've come back from the pub after 10 pints but unfortunately for me I didn't have that luxury when I watched this and stone cold sober, it makes painful viewing. If you want to see Vegas drinking beer out of an audience members shoe or sticking his finger down his butt-crack and wiping it one someone's new trainers then this is for you, however perhaps now you can see why a few pints is required preparation for this!

I must stress that this review is negative purely down to my own taste in comedy - I know that many of you will love this and for those people this DVD does not disappoint. I can normally take something positive from a comedy DVD even if I didn't generally like it and perhaps I just wasn't in the right frame of mind when I watched this, but it just didn't make me laugh and believe me, I wanted to, I really did.