Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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70 of 86 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
The men who killed the crimp..., 25 Mar 2008
I am a devotee of the Boosh, and I still managed to enjoy the good bits of this series, but the more prominent, ill-judged sections made it very difficult. The Boosh used to be a gentle, talky, phantasmagorically nonsensical bizarrerie in a world of formulaic and banal entertainment, and the third series suffers from the enforcement of 'normal tv' rules on material which can't survive such an imposition.
In the third series, obscenity has to be blatant rather than suggested, jokes and ideas are explained rather than simply produced for us to construe in the privacy of our own diseased minds; relationships are described rather than demonstrated, and the magic is squashed down by reams of The Explicit. The joy of a Boosh joke used to be the ellipsis, the obliquity; even a tiny pause in the delivery could be a recognisable stylistic quirk which became a joke in itself: the texture of the language was rich and subtle enough to improve with re-watching.
In the third series, the atmosphere is oddly alien to this kind of humour: suddenly the dialogue is laddishly sarcastic and harshly modern, or employing nostalgic whimsy only to point at it in a knowing way. The friendly, loose yet satisfyingly constructed tales of series one and two become a routine, formulaic sit-com, and the prosaic harshness punctures the fantasy.
The second series flat was a less magical environment than the Zooniverse, and the Nabootique is worse: suddenly the Boosh-space is very much indoors in mundane London, and oppressively crammed with obtrusive hordes of the self-consciously trendy. What happened to the lonely, obsolete corners of the universe populated by mystical, sad and dysfunctional monsters, or the dreamily lush back-projected landscapes?
Somehow the role of Vince and Howard's relationship has eroded: instead of being two terminally-bored idiots eternally yoked together in unspoken sympathy when faced with a world full of pitiful grotesques, they have become a trendy urbanite jerk and his profoundly depressed doormat, the dissolution of their mutual affection rendering the Boosh colder and less appealing.
The re-use of familiar material is unfortunate: it could have been handled much better or avoided, and the third series music doesn't reach the joyous level of the second series. That said, I enjoyed 'It's what's inside that counts', and a few other high points such as Howard's dance with Elsie, and the jewel-like animations. I was also pleased to see a decent selection of roles for the always sultry and delectable Rich Fulcher, and I only wish our voluptuous Bob Fossil had had some more original material.
I still think Barratt and Fielding have the potential to return to form, and continue the best British tv programme around in the style it deserves. Whatever else is said, it's still better than all the other pedestrian drivel around and this dvd is firmly on my shelf with the others. However what I really hope is that the Boosh give us another radio series, and get back to the quality of writing that made the first radio series so glorious. If you're looking for a first Boosh purchase, I direct you to that fine body of work, or the utterly charming first television series.
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46 of 58 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Yes and/or no, 25 Jan 2008
Some of this is really funny. Some of it is fan service (and fair enough - I like to see boys kissing as much as the next girl). Lots of it is recycled (which is such a shame coz one of the best things about the Boosh is originality). Some of it is not funny.
The worst thing is this: the bits that are not funny aren't unfunny in the kind of still-interesting, somehow-strangely-mesmerizing way that the less funny bits of the first two series were. In some of the episodes Fielding seems just - well, tired. And a tired Vince doesn't work.
Also, the last episode was plain bad.
On the plus side, there are still flashes of genius. More than in most comedy series. It's really only the comparison with the first two series that makes this disappointing.
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18 of 23 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
To Define is to Destroy, 12 Sep 2008
Would have been 2 and a half, but Amazon wont support that. Lets be honest, the first TV series of the Boosh was probably, the funniest, most intelligent, most stylish, most creative, most 'out there' new comedy... 'phenomena' for a generation. They bypassed the ghastly evolutionary dead end of Mr Elton's alternative to comedy, very loosely following a lineage whose forebears include Vic & Bob and the sainted Pythons themselves. These guys roared in out of left field, almost from another dimension, but as they emerged into our reality, everthing was just so right, so perfectly balanced. It was time and space, but not as we know it. The thinking nation divided between those (of us) who identified more closely with the dour northern miserablism of Mr Moon, and those innocent, happy, boiffanted souls who looked to Mr Noir for leadership and inspiration. Their coterie of gifted supporting players, notably Matt Berry/Dixon Bainbridge filled their corner of the alternate universe with brilliant energy. They even had their own George & Ringo in Naboo and Rich Fulcher. It looked like genius, and perhaps it was, but genius, so they say, is 99% perspiration, 1% inspiration. The material had evolved through years of stage work, and was given a final polish in a brillant radio series.
You'd have thought their subsequent work would have benefitted from the freshness, momentum and sheer genius of Series 1, but it doesnt appear to have been the case. Series 2 & 3 seem to be a body of work almost distinct from what went before. Instead of benefitting from the initial momentum, if anything, their extra mass has just added inertia. This wasnt immediately apparent, although series two was different. It had a glossier feel, and had become worryingly self referential. It wasnt quite a parody of its former self in the way that series two of the Young Ones was, all those years ago. There were brilliant flashes of genius amid the boiling gas and dust; new stars were forming, but it was clear that this new universe was cooling. Series three seems to be a slow continuation of the process. By any other standard there is still great stuff here. The Crack Fox and the strange tale of Sammy the Crab were Gamma ray bursts of comedic energy. Maybe the difference is that this activity seems to be taking place in a contracting, rather than an expanding universe. There is still real genius at work here, but they are fighting the inertia of the Boosh's own dark matter; the self referential, Camden punk, NME in-crowd stuff. Montgomery Flange and his ilk may yet represent the phoenix rising from the ashes.
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