Denis
Leary
Umbrella
Entertainment
Web:
http://www.umbrellaent.com.au
R4
DVD
No Cure for Cancer is one of Denis
Leary’s more famous stand-up routines from the early 1990’s. It was made into a
Showtime special and is now released in Australia by Umbrella with a film-clip
of his most famous song “Asshole”. Leary is cantankerous, obnoxious and outrageous;
his humour is confronting and certainly not politically correct. At the same
time you quickly realize what Leary is not, he is not sexist, racist or
homophobic. He is a new generation of cutting edge comedians which while being more
than willing to offend have a deeper appreciation to the new social agenda, for
example, his section on men having trouble crying and the birth of his child is
genuinely touching and his attack on the “feel sorry for itself” generation
which lives for therapy and rehab, ignoring personal responsibility is actually
rather insightful.
Leary, however, also has no time for
political correctness and brazenly attacks those who wish to control the lives of
others. His favourite subjects seem to be drugs, cigarette smoking, meat eating and therapy.
His comedy seems to solidly rooted in a “libertarian” worldview and he rails
against those who wish to curtail the freedom of others and this is sadly a
growing trend around the world today. He
peppers his humour with outrageous and at times deliberately extreme comments
about various musicians and personalities. At one stage he asks God why John
Lennon was shot and yet Yoko Ono was sparred to continue inflicting us with her
music and reminds us that one good thing in the Eighties was that we ended up
with one less Bee Gee !
Leary has a truly vicious tongue and an
acerbic dry wit and yet there is more than just humour here, a lot of his
observations have a ring of truth to them and make you consider the importance
of both individual freedom and responsibility. Above All No Cure for Cancer is
great entertainment and will provide more laughs per minute than you will have
had for quite some time...
This review
will appear in Volume 2:1 (2009) of the digital and print edition of Synergy
Magazine.
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