Sarah Silverman: Jesus is Magic

Synopsis

Comedian Sarah Silverman gives us a sample of her stand-up routine interspersed with a few musical numbers, book ended by a tiny plot of upstaging her two friends.

What I Thought

It took a while for me to write this review because I kept trying to come up with a witty and clever way of saying it sucked. "Jesus may be magic, but Sara Silverman is not" was an obvious choice, so I threw that one out. "There is no silver lining in Silverman's movie" was another. "Magically not humorous", "Sarah: plain, tall, and dull", and "Jesus was funnier" were also cut. So I threw out that idea. Too bad Silverman didn't throw out hers...

In short: The musical interludes fall flat. The stand-up falls flat. It all falls flat.

I really wanted to like this movie. I think Silverman has a great innocent, rubbery and expressive face, and when her material is funny, it's very funny. But there was just not enough of it. In an attempt to be "edgy", she gets racial (even dropping the n-word several times") and tries to play on stereotypes, trying to attach herself to the Chris Rocks and Margaret Chos, but Rock and Cho would wipe the floor with her.

Yes, there are a few funny moments, like when she sings "you are dying, you're gonna die soon" to a bunch of old people at a retirement home. But most of the time her edginess falls flat. Instead of making you chuckle, her racial comments just raise your hackles. When someone like Richard Pryor or Margaret Cho use the n-word or the f-word (to describe gays), it's funny, but that's because you hear about Pryor or Cho's upbringing and opinions and other comedy around those words. Since we get to know so little about Silverman, they just feel borderline offensive. People like Pryor, Cho, the South Park gang, Rock, all make offensive things about race, sex, orientation, etc., sound, well, funny.

Granted, she's playing a role: that of a dimwit racist. But without background setup, she seriously comes across that way, and that's just not funny.

All photos and text copyright Ryszard Kilarski, unless otherwise noted. Clip art, drawings, paintings are either free domain or copyrighted by the artists.