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Home Subscribe About Us Features News Album Reviews Movie Reviews Past Movies Movie Resources Concert Reviews Book Reviews Top 10 Resources Contact Us	Thou Shalt Laugh – The Deuce DVD Director: Phil Cooke Producers: Hunt Lowry, Jonathan Bock Shooting format: miniDV with some 16mm, super 8, Dvcam Starring: Tim Conway, Victoria Jackson, Taylor Mason, Thor Ramsey, Dan Nainan, Bone Hampton Rose Rock Films www.thoushaltlaugh.com 96 minutes In a day and age where stand-up comedy has become something that usually will offend and/or embarrass in mixed company, it’s commendable that Rose Rock Films has produced a family-friendly collection of routines by Christian comedians on DVD. But is it funny? Aside from a few reliably hilarious televangelists (who don’t seem to know that they’re being funny, anyway), Christianity hasn’t produced a bumper-crop of intentionally funny stand-up practitioners. Sure, there are your Youth Pastors, whose comedy arsenal runs the gamut from wearing funny ties to …well, those funny little moustaches they grow; but the church hasn’t produced many Steve Martins or even Jerry Seinfelds lately (although I think I spotted a Moe Howard once at a more liberal Presbyterian church). Mark Lowry and Mike Warnke aside (and that’s if you’re still counting Warnke), the list of laugh-out-loud Christian comedians that don’t perform on a cornfield set accompanied by banjo music is a short list, indeed. Thankfully, Thou Shalt Laugh features five sanctified stand-ups hosted by no-less a comedy legend than Tim Conway. For the most part, this is not Youth Rally stuff, but genuinely funny material. Thor Ramsey gets things off to a cautious start with some material which is generally funny, but not always strong enough to deliver the uncontrollable belly-laugh; in front of a less-forgiving audience, you get the feeling that the flop-sweat would start to flow any minute. His humor is basically a mix of observations on family life and its foibles. Dan Nainan turns things up a notch by immediately stating the question in your mind as soon as you see him: just what race is this guy, anyway?! Nainan gets lots of mileage out of his half Japanese / half Indian ethnicity, and has a confident, sharp delivery. Many of his gag lines come when and where you least expect them, and you’ll find yourself laughing from the first line he utters right to the end. Victoria Jackson, late of Saturday Night Live, brings her strange brand of humorous observations, poems and songs, mingled with an obvious Christian orientation, to a somewhat bewildered audience (wouldn’t you be bewildered by a female comic who stands on her head while singing, and then proudly announces her age?). Victoria’s humor is strange, but unique enough to be genuinely interesting, and often very funny. Bone Hampton, the only African-American comic in the bunch, isn’t afraid to bring racial elements into his act, and is more than capable of getting big laughs out of it; his style is loud and home-spun; the kind of humor that makes you recognize not only how different we are from one another, but ultimately how much we’re all really the same. Forget that – he’s just funny. The last performer is Taylor Mason, who is really quite amazing, not only as an excellent comic, but as a creative and mesmerizing ventriloquist. Without getting ‘blue,’ Mason manages to walk the edge between being keenly observational and cuttingly satiric (his cell phone call to God might make some audience members a bit uncomfortable, as Mason carries on both parts of the conversation). Mason has an uncanny ability to infuse his puppet characters with a personality that’s so well defined that you really begin to feel like it’s the puppet that’s doing the thinking… (cue the weird music)! Taylor incorporates a lot of audience interaction in his act, and has a keen ability to ad lib and create running gags based on interplay with the audience members. To top it off, Mason ends his portion of the show with a piano routine, where he performs an original song, interspersed with some verbal comedy schtick (if I may be so borscht-belt describing a bunch of goyim). If laughter does the heart good like medicine, you might want to invest in some heart-healthy humor and give Thou Shalt Laugh a try. It might not solve all of your problems, but as Myron Cohen might say, “It couldn’t hurt….” By Bert Saraco www.myspace.com/expressimage