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| Wednesday, May 7, 2008 12:22 PM |
| On the Viewer - The Aristocrats |
 by Fëanor |
Somehow or other I got my hands on the soundtrack to this movie (which isn't music - the movie has none - but just dialogue tracks) a while back and it had me crying at my desk with hilarity as I listened to it, so I'd been looking forward to seeing the entire movie for a long time. It finally arrived from Netflix some weeks ago, I put it on my iPod - and then held onto it for a bit because I wasn't sure I really wanted to watch it in public in that fashion (what if I just started cracking up on the train?). But finally I bit the bullet and did the deed.
If you don't know, the movie is a project by Penn Jillette and Paul Provenza wherein they got a lot of famous comedians (and some not so famous) to tell (or at least talk about) one of the most infamous and dirtiest jokes of all time. The joke is very simple: a family goes into a talent agent's office, they tell him they have a great act for him, and then proceed to demonstrate it. The main body of the joke takes the form of a description of the act, and basically involves the comedian coming up with the most offensive, disgusting, horrific acts he can possibly imagine and describing them in great detail. After the demonstration, the talent agent asks what the act is called and is told, "The Aristocrats!"
I had expected the movie to have an explanatory introduction, some in between bits, or something like that, possibly providing the further history of the joke or some more information about the production. But in fact, it's exactly what I already heard on the soundtrack - comedians telling the joke, one after the other, in various settings and in various ways - but this time, of course, accompanied by video of the people speaking. Some people refuse to tell the joke altogether (Jon Stewart, for instance, disappointingly enough). Some tell it extremely well (Gilbert Gottfried and Bob Saget's renditions are particularly hilarious, as is, surprisingly, one by a ventriloquist comic I'd never heard of). Others fail at it rather spectacularly. I just don't get Sarah Silverman, and her version of the joke just falls completely flat for me. I didn't care for Whoopi Goldberg's version too much, either. And Lewis Black does it rather badly, which would have surprised me, if he hadn't pointed out that he really isn't that kind of comedian; he doesn't really tell jokes.
Overall, the movie wasn't as funny as I remembered it being when I was just listening to the soundtrack. But bits of it are quite hilarious, and it works as an interesting deconstruction of joke-telling and jokes in general.
After having said all that, I should point out that I've just looked over the plot summary and cast list for the movie on IMDB, and I'm starting to get the weird suspicion that somehow I didn't actually see the whole movie; there's a lot of people mentioned here who I don't remember seeing at all. I might rent it again just to make sure. |
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