Reviewed by Simon Sweetman

HOLLYWOOD has structured most of its worst comedies around one joke (try anything with Martin Lawrence, Chris Kattan or anything post-1990 with Steve Martin). Then again, Hollywood has managed to also create some of its finest comedies around one joke (try most things with Ben Stiller on his one-man shame quest or the early pairing of Gene Wilder and Richard Pryor). We all know it’s not the joke – it’s the way it’s told; not the tale but the telling. The Aristocrats is a documentary that centres itself on one joke; one very infamous joke, perhaps the worst of all time.


It’s a comedians’ joke (an in-joke for comics to riff on, flex their comedic muscles). The set-up is simple: a talent agent is hearing about a potential new act. Cue all manner of filthy and disgusting (beyond lurid) examples of human depravity (incest and shit-eating appear most popular) and then when the talent-agent says, with disgust, “well, what are they called?” the answer is the two-word title of the film, “The Aristocrats”. So, as you see - not that funny. Arguably not funny at all. But this joke, a throwback to vaudeville, allows the performer to indulge in their wildest fantasies, their weirdest thoughts, their toughest subject-matter.

Penn Jillette (of Penn and Teller fame) teamed up with comic Paul Provenza to explore this joke, assembling 100 comics and rolling the camera while a range of famous faces espouse bad-taste, throw tact out the window and submit themselves to their harshest critics (themselves and other comics) trialling the absurd, the surreal and the downright rotten.

That’s the premise for the documentary: let the hilarity, erm, spew forth.

Provenza and Jillette drag in some big names to comment – and sure, for every Robin Williams, Chris Rock, Billy Connolly and Phyllis Diller, all just there to make passing comment and provide context, there are some truly hysterical interpretations. The bitingly deadpan Sarah Silverman develops the joke one-step further, suggesting she had a personal clash with one of the members of The Aristocrats that she talks about, eyeing the camera as if coming to terms with talking about it for the first time she deadpans that she was raped by one of the members of the troupe. It transcends the bad-taste that an inferior comic would search for in the very set-up of the joke. Taylor Negron is hilarious, Drew Carry manages to provide wit and charm as he explains the little something extra that he adds to his telling of the sordid tale. And Paul Reiser manages to eschew his usually schmucky persona to get down and dirty. It’s great seeing veterans like George Carlin and Eric Idle, respectively masters of cerebral commentary and post-Dada ludicrousness, getting rough and playful. And then there’s Bob Saget. Forever to be remembered as Dad from Full House, Saget has successfully recast himself as a filthy, degenerative stand-up act (he was a comic before agreeing to the devilish comfort of a sitcom-hell which swallowed him up only to spit him out a decade down the track in to typecast purgatory).

The Aristocrats – for a one-joke film – manages to work on many levels. First there’s the taboo nature of risqué comedy. Should we even be laughing at this? Then there’s the fact that a documentary has chosen humour as its subject in these post-9/11 times. Hey, sure, Fahrenheit 9/11 and Bowling For Columbine had compelling moments and humour. And the film 9/11, shot from the point of view – and in commemoration of – the New York fireman that were faced with the unbelievable situation of the towers tumbling was an amazing piece of raw footage, compassion threaded carefully through to stitch the grief and celebration in to a film. But can we please look at a human emotion that is perhaps most perplexing: what makes us laugh? The Aristocrats helps to show that it’s different for each person. And provides more laughs in the process than any new release comedy you could rent from your DVD outlet.

This meditation on the art of comedy and the artifice behind laughter as a response is superbly crafted (the editing really makes it; backing up the film’s conceit that it is indeed not the story but the way it is told) and layered with sickly sophisticated humour: Billy The Mime acts out his version of the The Aristocrats, there’s an animated South Park rendition, a card-playing comic deals corresponding card-tricks to punctuate his telling of the tale and most humanely the irrepressible and simply unique Gilbert Gottfried uses it at a Friar’s Club Roast (the subject: Hugh Heffner) to ease the tension of – you guessed it – some post-9/11 humour that seemed just a little too black. The Aristocrats is a must-watch film for anyone who has ever questioned why they were driven to laugh at something.

Hey, why not take the whole family?