SUMMARY:

One hundred successful comedians do a riff on the same old hoary vaudeville joke. It’s vile. It’s disgusting. It’s sickening. It’s funny as hell.

STEVE SAYS:

The point of this documentary is to show how comedians are like jazz musicians, riffing on the same theme and coming up with entirely different and distinct results. It was conceived by stand-up comic Paul Provenza (who directs) and Penn Jillette of Penn and Teller, who produces and appears with his silent partner. Their point is well made by some of the finest talents in comedy today.

The joke in question is as old as Phyllis Diller’s training bra and has been told by one comedian to another, ad infinitum for generations. It isn’t spoiling anything to tell you that the skeleton of the joke goes something like this: A guy goes into an agent’s office and says, “Have I got an act for you. It’s a family act.” The agent asks, “What do you do?” This is the point at which the inventiveness of each comedian takes hold as this bizarre, obscene, violent, scatological, incestuous and thoroughly disgusting act is described in graphic detail. It can go as long as the comic can sustain his momentum, growing sicker and grosser by the moment. At the conclusion of the description, the stunned agent says, “That’s some act. What do you call yourselves?” “The man answers, ‘The Aristocrats.’” That’s the joke. Not all that hilarious in its bare bones form, but it can kill when that middle part is filled up. A couple of the comics played with the punch line as well, calling the act, “The Sophisticates.” One female comic turned the premise on its head, describing an act that is completely genteel and proper, then naming the act something vile. I think that was my favorite version.

You wouldn’t think that hearing variations on the same joke for an hour and a half could be that entertaining but the audience we saw it with was in the throes of gut-busting laughter for much of the movie.

One of the best scenes in the film is a tape of a Friar’s Club roast of Playboy publisher Hugh Hefner. Gilbert Gottfried is at the dais and he’s pretty much bombing. So, in desperation, he turns to “The Aristocrats.” You see faces of the other comics as they realize what he is doing. One by one, they begin falling out of their chairs in uncontrollable laughter that spreads to the audience. But the most arresting thing about the scene is watching Hefner, who has clearly never heard the joke before. Mind you, this is the man who launched the sexual revolution and as fought against censorship of any kind for as long as he has been publishing. The look on his face, though, is almost one of horror, as if to say, “What have I wrought?”

The film is not only crude in content, but in its look as well. It’s shot on tape for about a buck and a half. Sometimes, the sound is captured by the camera mike instead of being professionally recorded. But the bottom line is that, you will be entertained...if you are not of the faint of heart. But if you easily offended, don’t bother. There were a few walkouts from our audience, but most knew what they had come to see and they weren’t disappointed. Neither was I.

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Patty says

I had no flipping clue what THE ARISTOCRATS was going to be about. I thought it might be a remake of the 1970s animated film, THE ARISTOCATS. Boy, the joke was on me.

Steve really said about all there is to say about the quality of the production. It was a little like watching Grandpa’s home movies, except instead of shirttail relatives panning to the camera, you have comedians. Almost every stand up who is worth watching was given the opportunity to talk about….well, gross stuff. Stuff that made the jokes told when the lights went out at Boy Scout Camp look like Easter psalms. Stuff for which you’re sure you’ll go to hell for even contemplating. Stuff that you wouldn’t utter after ten beers at a frat party. We’re talking some really, gross stuff. If I even replicate one of the jokes here, we’d have to voluntarily surrender our right to review Disney movies.

I loved it.

Oh yeah, a couple of times I had to stifle the gag reflex. The gross factor was more over the top than phone sex with Gilbert Gottfried. That was also the beauty of the concept. One after another, comedians (some we associate with prime-time family viewing) tried to out-gross each another. The commentary was at times funnier than the renditions of the joke. The joke was dissected, analyzed and sometimes autopsied, but it was always funny. It was like watching babies preen and giggle when they discover themselves in the mirror. These guys cracked themselves up.

There’s a litmus test that you should self-administer before you buy your tickets to THE ARISTOCRATS: if obscenity offends you, don’t go.

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