Margaret Cho: CHO Revolution

CHO Revolution is twenty years old and I think this is the comedienne at her best. Margaret looks positively stunning in her evening gown, but is also hilarious pulling multiple rubber-faces that are comical and downright ugly by turns, with physical comedy that gives some of the better-known classic male comedians a run for their money. Asian. Chicken. Salad.

I just legitimately find this set to be a really funny one, despite its advanced age, and I am comparing it to her more recent stuff like PsyCHO and her collaboration with Awkwafina - both are alright but just don't have the same punch as her earlier work. The ending here is also more inspiring and heartfelt.

I have always been impressed with Margaret Cho as a performer. She's funny, irreverent, with dead-on and hilarious impressions of her mother, etc. Unfortunately, she has become too preachy for me. She needs to get off her soapbox and stop whining about being Asian and female and her fluctuating weight. I don't watch stand up comedians to get a lecture about how to be more politically-correct. Her performance has become a vehicle for her agenda, and it's gotten old. And Margaret, stop blaming the media for getting fat! You are an adult - the only one who makes decisions for what you put in your mouth. I wish I could keep renting Cho's concerts, because she can be extremely funny, but I've had enough, at least for now. An honorable mention is deserved by Tony Daniels. I predict he will become a star in his own right. His low-key comedy complements Cho's over-the-top style.

It's almost impossible to avoid comparisons Cho's previous effort, her tour de force, "Notorious C.H.O." (2002). In many ways, it would be an unfair comparison. "Notorious C.H.O." was in front of a much larger audience, during what almost everyone agrees was Cho's best comedy tour ever. Cho worked almost every major theme she's ever utilized into the routine. The result was a mesmerizing foray into self-loathing, gender, femininity, weight, dieting, beauty, race, family, love, fame, television, politics and sexuality. It was cathartic for performer and audience alike. Listening to Cho discourse on her ill-fated television show while raking TV executives and weight-phobic misogynists over the coals was, and remains, something not to be missed.

It would be asking the impossible to top such a magnificent performance. And, in fact, we should not ask Margaret Cho to do so.

That said, I think that while "Revolution" is an able comedy film, it is not necessarily Margaret Cho's best work. Technical issues stand out almost immediately. Chalk it up to my bad hearing, the theater's awful sound system, or perhaps poor sound recording by the film-maker himself. Whatever. The sound quality of the film was particularly poor. This afflicts the film not only in the opening sequence (we visit with Cho and warm-up act, the openly gay comedian Bruce Daniels, in a limo on the way to the theater) but various moments in the film itself (particularly when Cho gets too close to the mike).

The other technical problem with the film is that the camera work is simply not as good as in "Notorious C.H.O." Cinematographer Kirk Miller worked the camera for "Notorious C.H.O." (both times working for director Lorene Machado). But the magic is simply not there. Perhaps that is due to the venue. The stage is much smaller, and the wings less expansive. But whatever the problem is, much of the film is a face-on film of Cho's performance. The wonderful movement and lyricism of "Notorious C.H.O." is missing here.

The content of the film is somewhat uneven as well, which is almost solely due to Cho's performance.

It's not the audience. They are in stitches, howling with laughter at even the weakest jokes and tall tales. They cheer at even the mildest political criticism. They give Cho a standing ovation at the end of her show.

The film starts out strong enough, with Cho pulling a very funny physical bit of humor with her costume.

But the show falters afterward. Comedic routines just get started, and then they are put on hold during which there are long pauses. None of the routines really go anywhere, or are linked thematically or narratively. Indeed, each of the humorous bits is very short. That's the biggest problem: They really don't build up enough of a head of steam to really get the film's audience in the mood. Just as you're working up a good head of steam for that continuous, 30-minute laugh-a-thon, Cho stops working the audience and the humor.

This is not to say that Cho is unfunny. To the contrary, she nails almost everything she does extremely well.

There is one outrageous skewering of the type-casting Cho has to confront in Hollywood. As Cho imitates the various ethnic stereotypes she's been asked to play, she mimics the physical as well as ethical contortions she'd have to go through in order to play these awful roles. It is superb comedy.

Cho's best moment, however, comes in the film lengthiest segment. Cho, who is rightly infuriated at the unrealistic and misogynistic weight-goals Western women are held to, talks about a very, very unhappy result of her six-month "persimmon diet." If you don't find the whole fifteen minutes of the bit funny, then you aren't alive.

I swear, I haven't laughed so hard since I read the "fudge-colored towels" bit in David Sedaris' "Naked" or the wedding scene chapter in Joe Keenan's "Blue Heaven."

"Revolution" ends on a really high note. It's not funny, but it is good and it ties the film together very well.

At a mere 1 hour and 10 minutes, "Revolution" is a much shorter film than "Notorious C.H.O." But that's the film's saving grace, in a way.

I recommend "Revolution" to anyone who wants to spend a pleasant hour laughing.

As a first generation, similarly "inappropriate" Asian American who grew up in a predominantly white city never quite feeling as "Asian" as other people seem to view me, there is no other comedian I can identify better with than Margaret Cho. Her range is fantastic - she can do hilarious impressions of everyone from asian "old school" relatives to George Bush and Condoleeza Rice, gay men to snotty 14 year olds, Japanese film samurai to Ukiyo-e pictures. I admire her tremendously - a brave, intelligent woman who manages to utilize her own closely-observed experiences of racism and sexism to educate the audience about it. An example - "Whenever I go to a dinner party, inevitably someone tells me 'Too Much Information,' and, 'Don't Go There.' -- Problem is - I live there. I bought a house there. I'll TAKE YOU THERE!'." She wisely advocates the need for constant communication and discussion to bring about the "CHO REVOLUTION."

Straight to the point; most of the material in Cho's new act is not funny. She can turn an occasional observation, and get a laugh, but most of the material on this DVD was just not humorous.

Which is too bad because there's some real material that Cho could've worked with and taken the distance, but, unfortunately never fully explores the actual issues she wants to put on the table. Instead she vents her personal frustrations, and, like a lot of her ilk, passes it off as comic phrasing.

One of the problems with performers on the comeback trail is that they're so blinded by their personal struggles that they forget that it was their ability to pull away the serious curtain on everyday life that made them funny and popular. Instead indulge in a kind of self-help prattle that's better left in a doctor's office. Cho is no exception, and occasionally does this on this DVD. Though much of the time she's just delivering blue statements she believes are undeniable truths, for which, for some reason, her devout fans cheer her on.

I'd say I barely cracked a smile through three-quarters of this thing, and as offensive and idiotic as I believed a lot of the material was, and is, I sat through it to give the thing a chance. And I have to admit that I did laugh about three or four times. But most of the material is predicated on the assumption that Cho's observations are fact, when in fact they're just her opinions recited to her audience as fact. And because she asserts them as facts, even though they aren't, she garnishes a loud cheer from people who really don't know a whole lot about Cho's issues, including Cho herself.

It makes you feel sorry for her at times. Here's this comedienne who's doing her best to give a good performance, yet the material comes across as a self help session, factually wrong, disgusting at times, and with the audience trying to help her to the next "break through." It's like a therapy session gone bad. I'll bet Cho'll look back at this DVD in thirty years with embarrassment, but that itself is assuming she grows from this experience.

Now, if you can get by all that, then you might like this DVD, but be warned, Cho's material is heavy on the blue-side, and not for the feint of heart. On the whole it's not worth it. If you're an Amer-Asian with leftest politics, and "gay" friends skirting the fringes of edge-driven society, then you might want to spin Cho's DVD.

Otherwise skip it, if you can help it. It's a waste of money.