"When God gives you AIDS - and God does give you AIDS - you have to make lemonAIDS."

- Sarah Silverman

If you find that joke offensive and/or in poor taste, you can stop reading this review. Sarah Silverman: Jesus is Magic is not for you. Don't see it. If you do see it, don't complain that her material was offensive. You were warned.

I thought it was funny. I still do. But more on that in a bit. Jesus Is Magic is a film of Sarah Silverman's stand-up comedy act. A theatrically-released stand-up film can be awfully hard to justify, especially since the reason we've heard of these comics is usually because of their appearances on cable. Why should we have to pay $9.50 to see someone tell the same jokes we've already heard on Comedy Central over and over and over again? Why not just release show directly to video? The answer to the former depends on the comic and, to be fair, the film material is almost always new. The answer to the latter probably involves phrases like "word of mouth," "marketing tool" and "Margaret Cho," so we'll just move right along.

Your enjoyment of Jesus Is Magic depends solely on whether or not you like Silverman and think she's funny. Luckily for me, I think she's a riot. I'd never seen her stand-up before, but she won me over with one line in The Aristocrats that reeeaaally upset Joe Franklin. Her most well-known film role to date is probably as the Jack Black's roommate's girlfriend in School of Rock.

Her stand-up style could probably best be described as "raunchy subversive JAP," though I have to admit that I only added "raunchy" after I realized that it's a relative term and that there are probably some people who still have actual standards of tasteful comedy. Not me! Raunch implies a level of humor that shocks by making jokes out of topic you not only would never joke about, but would rarely discuss in polite company. After Forbidden Zone and Live Freaky! Die Freaky! those topics simply no longer exist for me.

Take the lemonAIDS joke above. To normal people, it's probably tasteless. But it's also a great pun. And a great pun will pretty much always top tastelessness in the funnisphere. The joke on its own isn't as funny as it was in the context of the movie. It's actually the capper to a bit on children building self esteem from playing tag. To explain the whole joke would kill the humor and ruin it for anyone who intends to see Jesus Is Magic. Which would be mean, since I'm recommending it to its intended audience.*

The word "raunch" also carries with it the implication of saying shocking things for the sake of shock value, and that's not what Silverman is doing. When I referred to her as a JAP earlier, I wasn't doing so in a derogatory way. Being a Nice Jewish Girl is her persona; a persona she presents with such earnestness that we can see her winking at us from behind the facade. Since deconstructing comedy is the surest way to eradicate its humor, I'll stop with the words, "either you get it or you don't."

Clearly, I enjoy the comedy of Sarah Silverman. Sadly, the movie that contains her material is a mess. It begins nicely enough. Sarah is hanging out with her friends (Sarah's sister Laura Silverman and Brian Posehn), fellow comics who are bragging about their latest accomplishments. Sarah (the character) sits and watches with a mixture of annoyance, envy and panic on her face and Silverman (the actress) plays it beautifully. When the inevitable question of "What have you been working on" turns to her, she lies. Big lies. "I'm-doing-an-amazing-show-and-it's going-up-tonight,-but-it's-sold-out-so-you-can't-come-oh-sure-you-can-watch-it-from-the-wings..."-type lies.

She leaves her friends' apartment and launches into a song about the trouble she is now in. It's not a bad song and it serves a function in that it gets us from the sketch to her actual show. And Silverman can certainly sing (she's playing Alexi Darling in Rent). But it's not the only song, just the only good one. Her stand-up - which is the whole point of the film - is repeatedly interrupted with other songs that really aren't funny enough to justify their existence. I got the feeling that she usually performs them on stage as a part of her act, but in Jesus Is Magic they get made into really bad videos. Bad enough to cancel out her other, very funny material.

There are a couple of other sketches, too. The only one that really works has those same friends visiting her in her dressing room after the show and it combines with the opening nicely to act as bookends for her stand-up. The other sketches - like the songs - just aren't that funny, though one of them sets up a brilliant post-closing credits tag.

I had a lot of fun at Jesus Is Magic, but you don't really have to see it in the theater. Rent or buy the DVD when it comes out and watch it with your friends at home where you can laugh as loud as you want at the good and gleefully mock the bad. As far as ratings go, if I was only rating Silverman’s act, I’d give it a good solid 8/10. But I’m reviewing the film itself, which really only deserves a 5, but gets a 6 because she’s so damn funny.

Oh and the title comes from one of her jokes. Her boyfriend (Jimmy Kimmel, though she never mentions him in the act) is a Christian (in the non-Jewish sense, not the crazy evangelical sense) and she is explaining to their imaginary children the differences in its parents' faiths:

"Mommy believes that she is one of God's chosen people and Daddy believes that Jesus is magic. Because he turned water into wine. And made the Statue of Liberty disappear in the 80s."

Funny stuff. But if you disagree, stay home.

*See "smokers, pot"