Film #191 - The Aristocrats (2005)
The Aristocrats is a documentary by director Paul Provenza and executive producer Penn Jillette that tells the history of one of the dirtiest jokes ever told. It does this by having well-known (and sometimes not so well known) comedians tell the joke. Again and again and again and again.
To those with a low tolerance for “blue material”, this film will be absolute torture. The versions of the joke generally get dirtier and dirtier as it goes along. (The worst comes from Bob Saget, the most scandalous from Sarah Silverman.)
“The Aristocrats”, you see, is a comedian’s joke, one they tell to break each other up. This aspect of the film brings in (strange as it may seem) a sense of sentimentality on board. It is stated that the joke was Johnny Carson’s favorite and the alomst reverence that some of the comedians show to the joke really gets across its place in history.
There is a point where I think even the most hard-skinned viewer will begin to tire of the joke. In particular when a comedian like Robin Williams shows up. He tells just the kind of joke that you’d expect him to. (It’s amazing how a “spontaneous” comedian like him can be so predicatable.) Of course, just when you start to tire of the whole affair, something like the Smothers Brothers version pops up, giving the whole thing a new lease on life. It’s also insteresting who’s not willing to tell the joke, apparently so as not to hurt their reputations (*cough* Jon Stewart *cough*).
The list of appearing comedians is incredible. I won’t list them all, but you can find old timers (Shelley Berman, Pat Cooper, Don Rickles), modern-day legends (George Carlin, Williams, Saget) and the current crop (Silverman, Stewart). All in all, over 100 different comedians and writers appear. They all stick to the matter at hand, with only the asses at The Onion (who are supposedly analyzing the joke) going off-track and getting political. I was actually pleasantly surprised more didn’t go that route. But it makes sense, throwing topical humor into a film like this would detract from the timelessness of the subject matter.
Ultimately, I really loved The Aristocrats. I’ve always been a sucker for a historical look at show business (vaudeville, MTV, you name it) and the kind of narrow focus of this film is just my cup of tea. Of course, as I stated earlier, if you don’t like dirty jokes, keep far, far away. But if you’re okay with this kind of stuff, it doesn’t get much better than this.