Ricky Gervais: SuperNature review: Unapologetic, provocative, and hilarious

3.5/5

Story:
The Netflix special stand-up featuring Ricky Gervais is the spiritual successor to Ricky Gervais’s previous stand-up special for Netflix titled Humanity. Gervais touches upon several contemporary topics in his jokes.

Review:
Ricky Gervais has earned quite the reputation over the years for his unfiltered comedy, often at the expense of the Hollywood elite. In fact, he often quips while hosting the Golden Globes that his jokes would eventually get him banned from hosting future events.

The new Netflix special Ricky Gervais: SuperNature is not different from his other popular stand-ups in terms of his style and delivery of his punchlines, but his jokes remain fresh despite revolving around some of his most commonly featured subject matters.

A master of easing the audience through self-deprecation, Gervais then switches gears to get to the crux of his jokes. He also warns the audience in typical fashion that his jokes will offend people. But the beauty lies in how this exposition is part of another ongoing joke he is performing.

In SuperNature he dabs into highly sensitive topics such as abortion, racism, rape, paedophilia, fat-shaming, and trans rights. He holds no punches and effortlessly connects all of his jokes together as he moves from one bit to another — some in very graphic detail.

Gervais makes it a point to note that, despite joking about Hitler and paedophilia, the one thing that is definitely going to cause controversy is his jokes surrounding transgender rights and transphobia. He argues that none of the horrible things he said would matter because any sort of joke or discourse about transgender rights would cause an enormous backlash — even paedophile jokes would become insignificant.

Despite the apparent crudeness in his jokes, they are layered with wit and evoke genuine laughter from the audience. Considering what happened at the Oscars this year, Gervais would have certainly irked Will Smith if he had hosted it instead of Chris Rock. As Gervais admitted in the aftermath of the incident that, unlike Rock, Gervais would’ve joked about Jada Pinkett Smith’s alleged infidelity rather than her hair loss.

Verdict:
Ricky Gervais is at his very best yet again, as he leaves the audience literally laughing out loud at jokes that would be considered highly inappropriate in the new digital age.