Movie Review: The Aristocrats

Penn Jillette of Penn & Teller fame came up with the idea for this documentary about comedy. In jazz you listen to various musicians play the same song while putting their own improvisational touches on it. It turns out that comedians do the same thing. To demonstrate, he gathered the best comedians and writers and had them all tell the same joke. There aren't that many jokes suited to this, so they choose an old joke known as "The Aristocrats". It has very little structure, a one sentence intro, and a one word punchline which isn't even that funny. The middle is left for the comedian to personalize and to push the boundaries of outrageous, stomach-turning, revulsion. Comedians don't usually tell it to audiences but rather to each other. The tagline of the film is "No Nudity No Violence Unspeakable Obscenity".

George Carlin opens with one of the best tellings. Kevin Pollack tells the joke doing a fantastic Christopher Walken impression, Mario Cantone does it as Liza Minelli. Bob Sagat is probably the most extreme, then again, Cartman of South Park manages to offend everyone and still explain how the joke isn't funny. Gilbert Gottfried told it at the Friar's Roast of Hugh Hefner 3 weeks after 9/11 and let everyone remember how to laugh again. There are variations you never would have expected. Eric Mead tells it as a card trick, jugglers turn it into a juggling joke and seeing a mime tell this joke you've watched some of the funniest people in the world tell, needs to be seen to be believed.

This film is not just clips of stand up, it also has these comedians explain how they approach it, what works and what doesn't. When Drew Carey tells it he adds a little flurish at the end and you hear what the ten other comedians think of it. George Carlin explains the importance of telling extreme things in a matter-of-fact way. Women explain the gender differences in telling the joke. Whoopi Goldberg explains how everyone expects her to swear so he she to go some place else with it. Eric Idle discusses differences between Americans and British.

The 2002 film "Comedian" with Jerry Seinfeld was about what it takes to build the material for a standup act. This film shows that it's not the material as much as the comedian that matters and how no two comedians are alike. I walked out thinking George Carlin's opening telling was the best, and then remembered one funny part after another for two hours.