One-man concert movies segregate performance from narrative and distil the essence of what stars can bring to theatrical works. Unlike actors playing famous writers or politicians in one-man shows, solo entertainers like Pryor, Midler, and Silverman don't even have a familiar public figure to guide or steady them. They have to bring everything out of themselves, to create, in fact, the character who is up there talking, joking, and singing, the character who "is" the famous performer who has packed the house and yet who still must be recreated consistently from night to night. In Jesus Is Magic, the stage is the forge in which the character "Sarah Silverman" is fashioned with the low-down inspiration of a woman who knows how to work dirt as if it were a precious metal. Silverman is at a peak right now and success hasn't seduced her into moderating her act much at all. In Jesus Is Magic that act comes across as a limited but decided form of perfection.

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Alan Dale is the author of What We Do Best: American Movie Comedies of the 1990s and Comedy Is a Man in Trouble: Slapstick in American Movies.