“Sarah Silverman: Jesus is Magic” is exactly what you’d expect from comedienne Silverman: raunchy, over-the-top and offensive. But it isn’t quite laugh-out-loud funny.
Silverman uses her tried and true brand of comedy in her new movie, a mix of stand-up, musicals and backstage scenes, in which she touches on taboo subjects such as rape, AIDS, 9/11, religion, race, the Holocaust and sex.
Her words make viewers squeamish and may cause their jaws to drop.
“Guess what, Martin Luther King?” Silverman asks in her stand-up routine, taped before a live audience. “I had a fuckin’ dream too.”
She goes on to tell the audience of a dream in which she saw a shark wearing braces jump out of a swimming pool, brilliantly convincing everyone she’s totally serious.
“So maybe you’re not so fuckin’ special, Martin Loser King,” she declares. “I want to be first comic ever to shit on Martin Luther King.”
The audience, wide-eyed from shock, is left wondering, “Did a white Jewish girl really just say that about one of America’s most admired people?”
She explains: “People only talk about the good things. They don’t mention he was a litter bug. He’d roll up all the windows, and lock them, and fart in the car with the heat up while his family suffered, and he would laugh. I just think people should know everything before they give them a day.”
Somehow the audience forgives Silverman, realizing her remarks are too outlandish to be taken seriously.
Offending people is nothing new for Silverman. She once stirred controversy for saying “chink” on NBC’s “Late Night with Conan O’Brien.”
She recently told The New Yorker, “(The word) has to be offensive, it can’t be a self-deprecating thing- I needed the most offensive word I could use on television.”
After Guy Aoki, a media advocate group member, griped and demanded an apology from NBC, he and Silverman went on Bill Maher’s “Politically Incorrect” where she called him a “douche bag.” Silverman, who brings up the controversy in her new movie, says that she shouldn’t have to defend her material and insists it’s all in context.
In “Jesus is Magic,” viewers can admire the fact that Silverman’s brand of comedy challenges the longtime associations that go with female comedians. Jerry Lewis once said female comedians made him uncomfortable because unlike men, they couldn’t say whatever they wanted. Silverman obviously wasn’t listening. The stereotypes of comediennes being cute or innocent like Lucille Ball have been broken by others, but Silverman takes her comedy to a new level by speaking her mind on any topic.
The problem is that most people are used to seeing the New Hampshire native in small doses because she typically plays supporting roles as she did in movies like “The Aristocrats” and “School of Rock.” Taking her off-Broadway show to the Toronto Film Festival was a bold move – one made perhaps without examination.
Watching Silverman for an hour and 12 minutes is probably too much because she switches topics quickly instead of building on her stand-up material. Furthermore, the movie is a harsh mix of different scenes. Silverman will be on stage when suddenly, the
audience is taken backstage or to a scene in which she sings. These scenes seem to serve no purpose other than to shine the camera some more on the comedienne. Why do we need to see Silverman yelling at her grandmother dead in a casket? Do we care if she can sing? Just make us laugh.
At the beginning of the movie, Silverman needs to find a star that is funny, smart, hot and has a perfect smile. Of course, she chooses herself. The last scene in which Silverman makes out with herself in the mirror is all too revealing; she is way too into herself.
She opens the movie dressed in a casual shirt as if she just woke up. Although she isn’t one to dress up, she could at least pretend to care. Her carelessness shows in the presentation of the movie. While she displays her comic genius, a movie format is not needed for this presentation. It leaves the audience yearning for more than just the stand-up they could get on HBO or Comedy Central. The screwy fill-ins just don’t cut it.
“Sarah Silverman: Jesus is Magic” is opening soon at the Bijou theatre in Eugene. For show times, check www.bijou-cinemas.com.
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