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 t
really pays to be born a woman with a genotype
predestined for phenotypic cuteness; that is, if
you are misfortunate enough to have to be born at
all. What can't they get away with saying? Who is
going to persecute them? Men? An attractive woman
could call almost any man by his racial slur-name
and they probably wouldn't react with offense.
Women? Well, they usually have a problem with each
other anyways. Hence, "Sarah Silverman: Jesus
is Magic", an extremely obscene, frontier
pushing comedy act by quirkily sexy comedienne
Sarah Silverman.
Unlike other stand up films,
like say, my personal favorite, Martin Lawrence's
"Runteldat", where Martin lucidly enacts
the sticking of his head into his wife's v**ina to
tell his yet unborn child not to f**k with him,
Sarah Silverman mixes live footage from a show in
Hollywood with skits and music videos. "Jesus
is Magic" is more Tenacious D "The
Complete Masterworks" than it is Eddie
Murphy's "Raw", though this is as raw as
it gets.
The film opens with a dry,
inwardly sardonic Sarah in her living room with
friends who are chronicling their recent successes
in the business while her boasts are pure farce.
Imitating real life, Ms. Silverman isn't really a
household name. While she's appeared in
"School of Rock" and briefly in "The
Aristocrats", as well as a DVD extra that
came with the last Queens of the Stone Age album,
she surely has felt the frustrations of verging on
"making it" in the whimsically fickle
world of Hollywood.
Director Liam Lynch's
influences can be seen in the musical shorts,
which are reminiscent of his work on Tenacious D's
videos and skits, and his own annoying but
disarming musical ventures. As she leaves her
apartment, calling herself a stupid sh*t for lying
to her friends about having a show, she breaks
into song (with a fair singing voice I may add)
about what the star of a show truly needs. And of
course, when she looks into the mirror and
realizes that she has all of those star qualities,
she says she is better than "those three
tw*ts combined (Nicole Kidman, Sandra Bullock and
Julia Roberts)". And judging by what follows,
she most certainly is.
As a stand up comic, Sarah
Silverman is not really a teller of jokes. Her
style is almost entirely conversational and
follows a repeating rhythm. While you know by her
pauses and body language when she is going to hit
you with the punch lines from one of her stories
or offhanded cultural observations, the effect is
never diminished and every line seems totally
unpredictable. For instance, she talks for two
minutes, not without some intelligence and refined
vocabulary, on how some people, a half black
ex-boyfriend in particular, are born with and
foster negative outlooks on life, then she pauses
and tells the audience that this boyfriend had
gotten mad at her because she told him that he
would have made an expensive slave, and she just
couldn't understand why he was unable to let
himself accept that remark as a compliment.
Reading that last sentence or
two will provoke compulsory laughter to ward off
uncomfortable moral feelings, but watching
Silverman exchange these radical sentiments with
her audience is beyond any good and evil -- it is
transcendental, almost. She shies away from no
subject, and I can honestly say that this is the
most brutal comic act I have ever seen. Granted,
she uses her cute Jewish girl status as a
springboard to lighten any possible censorship she
may come up against, but this is some daring sh*t.
She talks about angels getting AIDS, she uses
every derogatory racial slur and stereotype, sings
songs about how elderly people should just die,
and thinks of her a**hole as purely decorative,
telling people it is a wound from when she was
shot.
Those examples are just
etching the epidermis of "Sarah Silverman:
Jesus is Magic", and if you have no hang-ups
about laughing at everything you are not supposed
to find even remotely funny, then this will become
a regular showing at every party you have from now
on. Even with lines like, "So I was licking
jelly off my boyfriend's p**is the other day and I
thought to myself, 'I'm becoming just like my
mother'", my girlfriend still loved it.
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