Continuing on with how the fashionista would handle prison in an orange jumpsuit without his fan, how he would have to make one out of spoons and how Cho herself would call Amnesty International to retrieve it, is some of the most hilarious stand-up you’ll ever see. And that’s just in the first 15 minutes. 

The performance in her hometown of San Francisco displays Cho in all her curvy, rubber-faced and biting glory. The big-screen treatment of her famed 1999 stand-up routine does nothing new in terms of filming comedy, and that’s fine—we don’t need any unusual angles or extra footage when viewing Cho. Just watch her face and voice contort into that of her doting, broken-English Korean mother and you’ll understand. She’s a special effect unto herself. 

Cho’s routine leads us through all things Cho. It begins with sidesplitting riffs on her core group of friends—gay men. Cho reminds her audience: “We are the backbone of the gay community. . . . We guided (you) . . . through the Underground Railroad. . . . we went to the prom with you!” Used to gay men, Cho proclaims that being straight is “so subversive.” On the rare chance of meeting a single straight man, she asks, “Are you a unicorn?” 

She continues with an earlier job on an all-lesbian cruise ship in which 800 lesbians whale-watched. When she had a lesbian experience, she questioned her own sexuality (“Am I gay? Am I straight?”) but came to the conclusion that she was just “slutty”—“Where’s my parade?” 

In a darker turn, Cho vividly discusses the deleterious results of her 1993 sitcom, “All American Girl.” Though the show ushered in the first Asian American TV family, her stardom was short-lived. Her producer’s concern over Cho’s weight led the comedian to lose 30 pounds so quickly she suffered kidney failure. Asian Americans didn’t like her. She had an Asian adviser telling her how to be more Asian (“Margaret, use chopsticks, and when you’re done you can put them in your hair”), and she turned to alcohol and drugs for comfort. 

With confessional material, Cho occasionally lapses into a rehearsed mode of speech, sounding more AA/poetry slam and less charmingly off the cuff. Here, the laughs are fewer, and the routine teeters on, losing momentum and, worse, becoming preachy and overly long. Thankfully, Cho recovers by goofing on hardship, offering quips such as, “Our show was canceled and then replaced with Drew Carey because he’s so skinny.” 

For Cho it’s all in her timing, and she can both stretch a riff and nail it with one biting comment. She can tell a joke, mimic, offer commentary, play cute, play ugly and be so hilariously absurd that tears will run down your cheeks. 

In recommending comedy, that’s enough said.