Ahoy, squirts! Quint here with our main man Capone who has seen Sarah Silverman's JESUS IS MAGIC and wants to tell ya' about it. I really loved this film when I saw it waaayyyy back in March at SXSW. Sarah Silverman has the prettiest most foul mouth I've ever seen. It seems Capone is trying to interrupt my plans on conditioning Silverman to be my Bride, but a little healthy competition is good.
If you want to hear one of the songs Capone talks about in his review, give a CLICK RIGHT HERE!!! Picture the setting, though... Silverman strumming a guitar (looking like a school-girl if I remember the movie correctly) in a nursing home's recreation area, to an audience of geriatrics. She's really singing this song to a bunch of old people, with a giant bright smile on her face the whole time. The song is called You're Going to Die Soon. Enjoy the song, then come back to read Capone's review!!!
Hey, everyone. Capone in Chicago here. Unless you really dig, it’s kind of tough to find material that gives you an idea of what sort of performer Sarah Silverman. To call her a comedian would be selling her short. While her material is among the funniest I’ve ever seen, she doesn’t simply tell jokes; she tells stories that unexpected lull you into a false sense of sweetness, and then she smacks you over the head with some of the darkest and most inappropriate humor you’re likely to face in your life. She’s also a total babe, which makes her all the more irresistible. Although you may have spotted her during her brief television stints on “Saturday Night Live” or “Greg the Bunny,” or small rolls in School of Rock and There’s Something About Mary, my first hint at the greatness this woman could achieve in comedy was at the various televised Friar’s Club roasts, in which her routines always stand out.
A slightly broader audience got their first taste of Silverman earlier this year giving her rendition of the legendary joke in The Aristocrats, in which she turns the family in the joke into her own family auditioning for “The Joe Franklin Show.” Her slow and painful “remembrance” of being molested by Franklin is a scream. That moment in the film only hints at Silverman’s talent. Jesus Is Magic is about as good as it gets, and in my book, is an even funnier and more shocking work than The Aristocrats. Nothing is sacred in filmed stand-up portion of the movie: September 11 (she suggests that American Airlines should have turned a minus into a plus by changing their slogan “First into the Towers”); AIDS (“When God gives you AIDS, make LemonAIDS”); the Holocaust; race; sexuality; and strippers as role models for little girls. Much like the audience watching her in the film, the audience of critics I saw the film with featured pockets of laughter. Some things were funny to some; some things resulted in mostly dead silence (it ain’t that dark in any screening room). The material is edgy, filthy, uncomfortable, brutal, and funny as shit.
Not as funny, but still amusing are the musical numbers (with Sarah’s band, the Silver Men) and phony backstage bits with some of her comedy friends like Bob Odenkirk and her sister Sarah. The lyrics to her songs are sharp, but the music-video-style presentations fall flat, which is surprising since director Liam Lynch (currently working on the Tenacious D feature film) has a worthy history of making great shorts. These interludes serve as mere distractions next to Silverman’s on-stage work. She doesn’t deliver jokes like a comic. She’s an actress on stage, telling confessional-like stories about her friends, family, and boyfriend (talk show host Jimmy Kimmel). Then, just when you start to think she’s being genuine: WHAM! She hits you with something so wrong and foul about her dead grandmother that you want to wrech…in a good way. Jesus Is Magic is an eye-opening experience, best to be viewed by open-minded (waaaay open) folks with a tolerance for the taboo and a strong stomach. I love you Sarah Silverman; come run away with me. My wife would understand.
