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A comedian and a magician walk into a film distributor's office. They say, "We've got a great documentary we want you to release." The distributor says, "We don't do documentaries. They're too boring." The comedian and magician say, "Please watch our documentary. You'll really like it." The distributor says, "What's it about?" The comedian and magician say, "It's about the most foul and disgusting joke ever told, and we got 100 comedians, comedy writers, journalists, and actors to talk about it or tell it, with each version more offensive than the last." "Wow," the distributor says, "so what do you call this documentary?" And the comedian and magician say, The Aristocrats! Paul Provenza and Penn Jillette's treatise on comic sense and sensibility takes as its starting point a joke that is legendary among comedians. "The Aristocrats" is the punch line, but getting there is all the twisted fun. The setup -- a family asks a talent agent to audition their act -- and the punch line are fixed, leaving the comedian to riff and improvise, jazz-style, on the nature of this family's absolutely horrific and unprintable act. As one observer notes, "I think you could put people to death for what goes on in some of the best versions of this joke." The most memorable renditions are those that go beyond the gross to put a subversive spin on the material. Sarah Silverman outs herself as a former Aristocrat and unearths some repressed memories of her audition for venerable New York showbiz talk show host Joe Franklin (her punch line ups the ante on what Whoopi Goldberg terms "shockability"). Eric Mead performs the joke as a profane card trick. Mario Cantone channels Liza Minnelli for his version. Wendy Liebman saves her obscenities for the punch line, while Martin Mull's hilarious version could almost be told in mixed company. Don't even ask about Billy the Mime. There is certain shock value in seeing the joke performed by Bob Saget, who forever sullies his family-friendly persona, but it is Gilbert Gottfried who boldly goes where few comics dare to go with his epic performance at a Hugh Hefner roast in the near-immediate aftermath of Sept. 11, 2001. He is even funnier offstage, parsing the joke and its awful components and implications. The sheer variety of the artists (among them George Carlin, Judy Gold, Paul Reiser, Steven Wright, and an animated South Park rendition) and their insights into the nature of comedy keep The Aristocrats from being a one-joke movie. Donald Liebenson

All Movie Guide

"A family walks into a talent agent's office..." So begins "The Aristocrats," a joke kept mostly secret by stand-up comedians for decades. An intentionally "bad" joke, the laughs in The Aristocrats aren't in the punch-line (one of the only elements that's the same every time), but in the set-up, made unique by each comedian who tells it in an attempt to fashion the world's dirtiest joke. The cat was finally let out of the bag by Penn Jillette and Paul Provenza, the seasoned funnymen who gathered together a hundred people to tell a hundred different renditions of the bit. Among those presenting their personal take on The Aristocrats in this film of the same name are Jason Alexander, Robin Williams, Gilbert Gottfried, Jon Stewart, Emo Philips, and Chris Rock. The Aristocrats premiered at the 2005 Sundance Film Festival. Matthew Tobey

New York Times

It works on the mind as well as the funny bone and the gag reflex. A.O. Scott

Washington Post

Under normal circumstances, nothing kills a joke faster than trying to explain it. Yet here, such examination is the film's strong suit and provides much-needed respite, quite frankly, from the exhaustion of constant laughter. Michael O'Sullivan

Product Details

• UPC: 821575540759
• Source: VELOCITY / THINKFILM
• Region Code: 1
• Aspect Ratio: Pre-1954 Standard (1.33.1)
• Sound: Dolby Digital Stereo, Dolby Digital 5.1 Surround
• Language: English
• Time: 2:10:00
• Sales Rank: 16,325

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