By Mike Szymanski, June 2002

You just can’t help but giggle at Margaret Cho. Even if you haven’t seen her stand-up act, or her “All-American Girl” TV show or her first hysterical concert movie “I’m the One that I Want,” you’ll giggle incessantly at this round-faced 33-year-old of Korean background. It’s because that in “Notorious C.H.O.” she offers up all sorts of family problems, relationship issues and personal dilemmas that the average person can identify with, but then she also shocks, surprises and yes, probably even offends, even the most open-minded of audiences. This movie’s a scream! She’s simply divine, the movie about her successful 37-tour city is a laugh-out-of-your-chair type of film, and it’s as if you’re right there experiencing her tour all over again. This movie was filmed in Seattle and directed by Lorene Machado and very much captures the one-woman show, her hesitation before she goes on stage, her audience before and after the show, and her parents – two gems who’ve watched her show and tolerated it despite the references to them. She’s a mix of the rawness of Richard Pryor, she’s as shocking as Lenny Bruce, she’s as expressive as Lily Tomlin and as sweet as Carol Burnett, but to compare her to any of them is taking away from the fact that she’s a one-of-a-kind performer. She’s one of those comics who will sneak up at you with her sweet disposition and shock the s--- out of you. The title of the film, not really explained too much in the movie, is inspired by the ladies of rap music, like Li’l Kim and Eve, and there is a bit of the biting pit-bullish quality of those rap-esses in her material. Instead of dealing with her failed TV show and the compromises that she had to make, or her drug and alcohol addictions (see the Wellspring-released “I’m the One that I Want” DVD or vid for that), she focuses on her family, her musical tastes and her sexuality. Her sexuality is perhaps most shocking, because she talks explicity and pretty up front about her bisexuality, and her sexual encounters with men and with women. She knows she will turn off her gay male audiences, her mainstream audiences and her lesbian fans by being very explicit about her encounters, but it’s all pretty hysterical. She talks about watching TV and not seeing any Asian role models, but dreaming that someday she could be an extra on “MASH.” She talks about how Enya’s music facilitates relief (in the bathroom), and her fierce drag queen friends who died in 1989 and 1990 of AIDS, and about getting colonics in Los Angeles and getting the tube stuck into the wrong area. She talks about how if straight men got periods then every bachelor apartment would look like a murder scene. She really teases her parents and explains her mother’s acceptance of her sexuality, saying that “Everybody is a little bit gay” and then telling a funny story about her daddy’s gay experience with his best friend. Oh, and there’s much, much more. If you’ve missed her brilliant concert, here’s a chance to see it as if it were live, with some extra behind-the-scenes stuff you’ll never see. If you’ve never seen or heard of Margaret Cho, and you want to take a chance at something that you can relate to, and then not relate to, and still laugh anyway, then scope out this film and get to it.