DVD review by Steve Bennett

Tim Minchin’s really spoiling us with this year’s DVD, capturing a barnstormer of a gig, with one tour-de-force number after another.

Some of these songs have been about a bit, and three of them – Canvas Bags, If You Really Loved Me and Dark Side – were on his previous, if limited, So Fucking Rock release. But this is a quantum leap stronger than his debut, with comedy that’s as assured as both his musicianship and his showmanship.

He’s found a purpose in debunking superstition – everything from namby-pamby aura-reading to institutionalised religion, especially in the Pope Song which is included here as a welcome extra. Even the romantic ideal of finding ‘The One’ is logically demolished in his rationalist ‘love’ song If I Didn’t Have You.

Storm, his nine-and-a-half beat poem about critical thinking is a masterful routine, unlikely as it may seem to those who haven’t heard it. Those who have will surely savour another chance to be impressed by his supremely elegant defence of rationalism, demolishing the entirety of alternative medicine in one beautifully-expressed line.

He’s tongue-in-cheek about tackling any issues, though, teasing the naïve earnestness of a teenage rock-and-roll rebel that adopts for his track on prejudice, and throughout the aforementioned Canvas Bags.

There are a couple of fillers: Confessions milks a switcheroo joke (but then, that is the point), and the early religion-bashing songs are a little simplistic – but they’re only a minor drop in quality in nearly two hours of top-notch entertainment.

Bears Don't Dig On Dancing and Dark Side provide a boost of supercharged foot-stomping energy, while his Song For Phil D is a magnificently embittered response to a journalist’s criticism, again delivered by with a cheeky glint in those kohl-ringed eyes. Though with the assuredness on display on Ready For This, it’s unlikely Minchin will receive a review that stings quite so much ever again.

That well-placed confidence comes to the fore for his encore, when he abandons any attempt at getting laughs for the beautifully heartfelt ballad White Wine In The Sun, which is just about the most perfect secular Christmas song you could hope for. A top-quality end to a top-quality show.

Tim Minchin: Ready For This
Recorded at :Hammersmith Apollo
Running time: 115 mins
Extras: Jonathan Ross appearance (15 mins), Big Fat Quiz Of The Year Song (3 mins); The Pope Song (2mins of sweaty anti-Vatican brilliance)
Released by: Universal Pictures, November 29
Price: £19.99. Click here to buy from Amazon for £12.93

Published: 2 Dec 2010