** (out of ****)
A documentary directed by Paul Provenza.
Featuring Drew Carey, George Carlin, Phyllis Diller, Richard Jeni, Penn Jillette, Kevin Pollak, Paul Reiser, Bob Saget, Jon Stewart, Teller, and a bunch of other people
2005
89 min NR (should be R or NC17)
“The Aristocrats” is a movie with only one move. It’s the documentary-version of a 90 minute shoot-out, or a 90 minute monster battle, or a 90 minute car chase, or 90 minutes of the same explosion. Or how about an entire symphony that’s all loud, all fast, and all in the same key signature. Even in pornography people change positions every so often. But not in “The Aristocrats,” which is one joke (known as The Aristocrats) for 89 minutes. Actually, it’s just an 89 minute barrage of obscenities. The result is relentless and quickly dull. It’s a 30 minute cable special stretched beyond its limit. There are some amusing bits, some revealing parts of the comedian’s craft, and some lore of stand-up but, good Lord, not enough to fill 89 minutes.
The one joke told within “The Aristocrats” isn’t really a joke at all, just an excuse for comics to string along as many obscenities as possible. Rape, incest, murder, slavery, fecalphilia—nothing is off limits. You have probably never heard the joke told because, as the movie explains again and again (and again and again, as if someone had a stopwatch with only one mark: “feature length”), stand-up comics only tell it to one another and never to audiences. It’s a kind of a secret handshake, or a trade secret only brought out at conventions and never put on the market.
The resulting documentary is a million close shots, on digital video, of comedians gushing and laughing over how funny think they are being. As the movie drones on and on with its garden variety junior high shocks, it really struck me how lonely and desperate for attention comedians really are. I don’t think I’ve heard anything quite as contrived as a comedian laughing.
“The Aristocrats” could almost be one of those Dogme 95 films where two crazy Danish filmmakers agree to shoot the exact same short film 20 times in a row just to see what happens. If, say, we saw a half-dozen comics tell the joke from start to finish, we might have something. But “The Aristocrats” is as repetitive stylistically as it substantially: no shot lasts for more than about three seconds, even if it’s just to cut to a new angle of the same comic, and few comedians are even permitted to finish sentences. The result is that a single sentence is strung together out of the soundbites of ten different comedians. Does this make American stand-up comedians, as a group, look interchangeable and rather homogenous? Why, yes is it does, but, then again, I’ve always thought so. Is this the goal of “The Aristocrats?” I doubt it.
There are some good spots: Kevin Pollak tells the joke while doing a great impersonation of Christopher Walken. Billy the Mime silently acts out all the obscenities with a look of joyous abandon on his face. Richard Jeni makes fun of the movie’s editing pattern by always trying to look at the current camera, and always being a couple seconds behind. Naïve and open-faced, Sarah Silverman pretends to be a veteran of one of the characters in the joke, with sadly funny results, and Jon Stewart, all distinguished with his gray temples, is funny just by sidestepping the joke itself. And the magician who uses a deck of cards to illustrate the joke is amazing. Drew Carey and George Carlin aren’t bad either (although, between you and me, my opinion of Carlin is that he’s a more articulate version of a guy in a bar who wants to tell you how much better the world would be if he ran it).
Page two of “The Aristocrats.” Back to home.