Sarah Silverman: Jesus Is Magic - Palm Beach Post movie review

Sarah Silverman manages to offend everyone

By HAP ERSTEIN
Palm Beach Post

Your reaction to the recent documentary The Aristocrats is a pretty good indicator of how you will take to Sarah Silverman: Jesus is Magic.

Like that exploration of the dirtiest joke ever told, Silverman's quasi-concert film also goes out of its way to offend moviegoers of every race and creed. Take that as a warning, or perhaps as an enticement.

Roadside Attractions

'Sarah Silverman: Jesus Is Magic'

B-

The verdict: Profane, politically incorrect stand-up comedy concert with a few weak music video inserts.

Director: Liam Lynch
Starring: Sarah Silverman, Bob Odenkirk, Brian Posehn, Laura Silverman, La'vin Kiyano
Run time: 72 minutes
Release date: Nov. 11, 2005
Rating: Not rated; contains extremely graphic profanity and sexual talk.
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Backstage with Silverman
Film critic Hap Erstein explores a stand-up comedian who never pulls her punches.

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Official movie site

Silverman — who has one of the funniest vignettes in The Aristocrats — trafficks in profanity and politically incorrect put-downs, delivered demurely with a disarming faux-innocence. As one of her signature lines puts it, "I don't care if you think I'm racist, I just want you to think I'm thin."

She has been compared to Lenny Bruce, chiefly because of her off-color language. In fact, she is more like a foul-mouthed Gracie Allen, with much of her humor based on getting things wrong with a ditzy nonchalance.

Jesus is Magic is the title of her off-Broadway stand-up comedy show, which this movie makes permanent. To it she adds several music video inserts and an introduction in which she brags to her friends that she has a new stage show ("It's about the Holocaust and AIDS — but it's funny and it's a musical"). She is bluffing, but then she has to produce one.

The show's title refers to a segment of her act in which she aims her comic bludgeon at Christians. Although she is Jewish and takes great pains to present herself as a stereotypical Jewish American Princess, Silverman is no more abusive to Christians than she is, say, to blacks, Asians, Germans, Mexicans or short people.

If she were not delivering all of this with such clueless cheer, it would be very hard to take. Comedy is the most subjective performance genre and many moviegoers are bound to find Silverman tasteless and unfunny, but she certainly does not shrink from outrageous comic territory.

Not only does she invoke the Holocaust and AIDS, Silverman slips in a few one-liners about 9/11. Oy, as her grandmother would say.

Director Liam Lynch comes from the world of music videos and commercials, and it shows. The song segments have a primitive naivete that fits the material and the scenes that frame the stand-up act are amateurish and wince-inducing.

Still, Silverman knows how to work an audience and the onstage footage redeems the movie, which clocks in at a marginally feature-length 70 minutes.