The Aristocrats
dir. Provenza
Opens Fri Aug 26
Cinema 21

To begin with, The Aristocrats is about a joke, and the film's title is that joke's punchline. I know that sounds like a spoiler—and well, maybe it is, a little bit—but the punchline is hardly the point of The Aristocrats. So what exactly is the point of a 90-minute documentary about a joke in which the punchline doesn't really matter? Well, depending on your constitution, it's either an elaborate excuse for dozens of comedians to wax indulgently about infants being paw-fucked by the family dog, or a brilliantly left-handed examination of the very nature of humor itself. Either way, I nearly pissed myself with laughter—and I defy anyone with even the faintest appreciation for sophomoric humor not to do the same.

Directed by comedian Paul Provenza (with the assistance of Penn Jillette, of Penn and Teller infamy), The Aristocrats is a strikingly singular essay that purports—first and foremost—to be about an astonishingly filthy joke shared secretly for decades between professional comedians as soon as their audiences had retreated safely to bed. To that end, there's something of an elusive history at the film's onset, followed by an attempt to put the joke into a contemporary social context in the middle, and an inflated appreciation for comedy's old guard throughout.

But much like the punchline, The Aristocrats isn't entirely what it seems. Through dozens of retellings by many familiar comedians, the simple premise of a relatively under-whelming joke that is bloated in the most perverse, obscene, and hilarious fashion imaginable—a process that in its endless repetitions eventually begins to seem like a dealer repeatedly showing his hand. Particular merits go out to the unparalleled genius of Sarah Silverman, a very pregnant (and very filthy) Judy Gold, a surprisingly solid George Carlin, and a near career-reviving stab by genius-under-pressure Gilbert Gottfried. But the painful comedic failures of The Aristocrats are all just as interesting as the successes—the film casts a faint illumination upon the often indefinable brilliance of comedic improv, and it does so in the only roundabout way that seems fitting: endless, repugnant repetition.