Screen Scene
By Daily Bruin Staff
Nov. 9, 2005 9:00 p.m.
“Sarah Silverman: Jesus is Magic” Directed
by Liam Lynch Roadside Attractions
With the flagrancy of an exclamation point and the finesse of a
skilled ballerina, comedienne Sarah Silverman is, by all accounts,
quite competent in performing in an area of entertainment usually
predominated by men.
She proves she can hold her own in “Sarah Silverman: Jesus
is Magic,” a taping of one of her best performances,
intermittently sprinkled with music videos to replace her live
musical performances.
Throughout the film, Silverman covers a broad range of topics
and offers her idiosyncratic opinions. Fiercely Jewish and
purposefully incendiary, she brashly attacks everything from the
horrors of Sept. 11 and the Holocaust to the questionable practice
of sodomy, spitting out obscenities and all the while smiling with
a deceivingly ingenuous grin.
When commenting on the topic of religion, she brings her
personal life in; any potential child between her and her Catholic
boyfriend, she says, would have to be told that Mommy is one of the
Chosen People, while Daddy believes “Jesus is
magic.”
The picture also promotes a behind-the-scenes aura, including
scenes of Silverman yelling at her manager, and opens and closes
with Silverman talking to two friends she not-so-secretly
abhors.
Most of Silverman’s comedy good-naturedly pokes fun at
common stand-up fare (racism, sexism, religion, homophobia), but
some of her jokes cross over the line to an area of plain bad
taste.
At times, Silverman confirms her deliberate quest to be
outrageous by making crude, vulgar and blasphemous comments ““
she spares no one, not even Martin Luther King Jr. or her own
deceased grandmother.
The closing of the film finds her passionately making out with
her image in a mirror ““ presumably an attack on narcissism,
but the scene is unnecessary and over-the-top.
The occasional distasteful comment and random insertion of music
videos and “backstage” footage detract from the
potential of an otherwise bitingly sharp stand-up comedienne.
Nonetheless, the movie as a whole is an entertaining work that
elicits a healthy number of laughs while provoking viewers to raise
their eyebrows in incredulity.
““ Emily Wang
