The Aristocrats

The tag line reads:
"No nudity.
No violence.
Unspeakable obscenity."

Truer words were never spoken. The Aristocrats is a documentary in which about one hundred professional comedians tell their own variations on a joke whose entire middle section is left to the imagination of the teller and whose punchline is only really funny if that middle section is incredibly, mind-blowingly offensive in one way or another. So, we have some of the funniest people on earth telling one of the dirtiest jokes on earth. I remember being in Boy Scout camp at age 13 and the boys sitting around reading jokes out of those Truly Tasteless Jokes books. This movie is a bit like that, but funnier. It is completely filthy. Also, it is the funniest movie I've seen this year.

It's also the best film I've ever seen about stand-up comedians. I used to dabble in stand-up, terribly, and one thing I remember fondly was the chuminess of it all. It's the lowest position on the performing totem pole, but when it's done well, it can be beautiful. Comedians want badly to be liked, but they're never the sort of people that are the "life of the party" in their everyday life. More like the surly guy at the back of the party mumbling funny insults about the "life of the party". Here we get to see the way they crack each other up backstage, and the joke that they've told variations of since the days of vaudeville. Penn Gillette, as co-director, is showing us the backstage secrets of comedy in much the same way that he and Teller have been showing the secrets of magic for so many years. He's giving us a glimpse at how comedy works, and why it can be considered a pure art form. This film combines surrealism, scatology, ranting and stream-of-consciousness Joycean monologues. Actually, Joyce enjoyed a good excrement joke himself from time to time.

I can't remember everyone in the film. However:
Robin Williams tells a number of other, very funny jokes, and never really gets to the Aristocrats joke.
Whoopi Goldberg claims everything offensive has become trite in entertainment and then thinks of something completely outlandishly offensive.
Jason Alexander comes up with surrealism worthy of Dali.
Carrie Fisher, a favorite in our household, riffs on classic Hollywood.
Eddie Izzard, amusingly, is baffled by the joke as is fellow Brit Eric Idle.
Drew Carey adds a clever flourish to the punchline that makes it even sillier.
Sarah Silverman actually kills simply by telling the joke as a serious story.
Kevin Pollack does an impression of Christopher Walken telling the joke.
Steven Wright tells a clean, although extremely violent, version of the joke that is a mini-masterpiece of bizarre narration.
Bob Saget of Full House fame tells perhaps the most disgusting and obscene version of the joke in the entire film, cracking himself up the entire time.
And Gilbert Gottfried gives a legendary telling of the joke that must be seen to be believed.

Does the film tend to drag a bit? Absolutely. Do the tellings blur into each other? Yep. But, as each comic adds their own peculiar spin to this stupid joke, something wonderful happens- we experience that dizzy glee that can be taken as another way of saying "absolutely no socially redeeming value".