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DVDfever.co.uk – Jim Jeffries: Contraband Live DVD review Dom Robinson reviews
Universal Pictures UK 
- Cert:
- Cat.no: 8258691
- Running time: 72 minutes
- Year: 2008
- Pressing: 2008
- Region(s): 2, PAL
- Chapters: 6 plus extras
- Sound: Dolby Digital 5.1
- Languages: English
- Subtitles: None
- Widescreen: 16:9
- 16:9-Enhanced: Yes
- Macrovision: Yes
- Disc Format: DVD 9
- Price: £17.99
- Extras: Night One, Interview, Vox Pops
- Vote and comment on this DVD: View Comments
Director:
- Paul M Green
Producer:
- Paul M Green
Jim Jeffries is an exceptional comedian who I have seen several times at the Comedy Store in Manchester prior to him becoming a household name although, sadly, not quite a household name for this excellent DVD to have been stocked in shops as it’s an HMV-exclusive release.
He really knows how to play to the audience, sometimes with a nice self-deprecating tone, starting with asking who’s seen him before (cue cheers), and then who hasn’t seen him before (cue more cheers), and then commenting that the latter seem a happier bunch. He’s expertly put down hecklers such as when one chavvy woman shouted, or rather bawled, from the back of the room at the Comedy Store, one evening, and before the security guards came to remove her, he hollered back, “Sorry, love, I don’t speak ‘skank’!” 🙂
Filmed at the Arts Theatre, London on Saturday, February 2nd 2008, Contraband Live is his first live DVD and the topics covered include how Swedish people are sexy, how dementia is actually ‘honesty’, he also intersperses the death of his grandma with stating why Elvis Presley and Charlie Chaplin were paedophiles, then comes religion, bathroom attendants children with cerebal palsy on the same beach as topless women, “dick cancer” and how his ex-girlfriend thought it was contagious and wouldn’t sleep with him until it was gone, to which he replied, “Let’s just enjoy the width while we’ve got it!”, and, finally, him getting punched in the face at the Manchester Comedy Store in April 2007, a gig at which I was sadly not present but the Youtube clip shows him coming back to finish his set like a trooper.
Jim Jeffries is very rude and very laddish, but the latter is in an honest way and not as a shock tactic that the likes of talentless Chris Moyles can only attempt.
The clip below is off him being attacked at the Manchester Comedy Store, during which there is an edit to some of the material, but that which is cut out is shown in this DVD and further discussed.
Note that I’ve not given this DVD an overall marking because the sound, picture and extras play second fiddle to the main aspect of this disc which is the gig itself, and which is the score that really matters.
The anamorphic 16:9 widescreen print is clean and has no defects, but the lighting in the theatre isn’t the greatest as Jim basks in mostly red light so it looks a little odd at times, but the content of the gig comes across fine. The dialogue is clear and the right atmosphere is created for the gig on this disc when watching in the home.
When it comes to the extras there are three things here, starting with Night one/> (70:01), given that the main feature is of the second evening. It contains all the same material from the first evening, which you’d expect, but with two extra chapters to break up the gig. Watching a few minutes from this it certainly looks well worth a full watch as there’s some additional things mentioned during it.
Then comes an Interview (6:58) with the man, out in the street talking to the gorgeous Kate McIntyre about how gigs go all around the world, whilst dealing with a moronic heckler passing by, and then some vox Pops (2:10), featuring various comments of praise from the audience after the gig.
If there’s one problem with the DVD it’s that it’s very poorly chaptered, with only 5 lasting through the gig plus one for the end credits, so if you pause it and want to go back to something you’ll have to fast-forward through a lot. One every five minutes should be the rule of thumb. There are no subtitles for the gig, and only the main menu avoids being static by using the same piece of music as the gig and some repeated bits of footage in small boxes to denote the options to play the gig, select from the few chapters or go to the extras (labelled “XXX”).
PICTURE QUALITY
SOUND QUALITY
EXTRAS
OVERALL Buy it! 
Reviewer of movies, videogames and music since 1994. Aortic valve operation survivor from the same year. Running DVDfever.co.uk since 2000. Nobel Peace Prize winner 2021.