Deep Blue
Exuberantly raunchy 'Aristocrats' celebrates dirtiest joke in the world

You'd have to be pretty jaded not to find something offensive in The Aristocrats. And you'd have to be clinically dead not to laugh like a maniac most of the time. The brainchild of actor/comedian Paul Provenza, and magician /agent provocateur Penn Jilette, it's a movie about the raunchiest joke in history, told, discussed, analyzed, and riffed on wildly by dozens of professional comics of all ages, genders, races, and persuasions. It's an equal-opportunity joke, guaranteed to offend everybody, so disgusting, comics never tell it onstage—only after hours to other comics, hoping to top each other.

The joke itself is not funny; the punchline, "The Aristocrats," is, um, anti-climactic. It's all in the spin. Jokesters compare it to a jazz improv: a set-up, a punchline, and "a body of performance in the middle." The film dissects the joke and the art of joke-telling from every possible angle, from the editors of The Onion making a graph of the joke's most obscene elements, to Robin Williams and Drew Carey in split-screen telling the same joke in tandem.

There are feminine spins on the joke (Whoopi Goldberg's version includes foreskin and the song "Swanee"), and versions told by a mime, a ventriloquist's dummy, even jugglers with flaming torches. Carrie Fisher tells a Hollywood-ized variation. Tommy Smothers tries to tell the joke to Dickie.

The film's centerpiece is Gilbert Gottfried daring to tell the joke at a Hugh Hefner roast three weeks after 9/11. Unfortunately, the build-up to this performance is so excessive, the actual routine falls a little flat. (Although Gottfried is hilarious in other snippets.) But the funniest joke-teller may be clean-cut Bob Saget (of all people), who achieves crescendo after crescendo of outrageous vulgarity, and just keeps going. Most inventive of the lot is sleight-of-hand artist Eric Mead, who illustrates every dirty detail of the joke with an agile deck of playing cards.

More than just a movie about a joke, The Aristocrats transcends comedy to celebrate artistic vision, individuality, and freedom of expression—however rude.

THE ARISTOCRATS A film by Paul Provenza and Penn Jilette. A THINKFilm release. (Not rated) 86 minutes. (***)
Review published in Good Times, August 18, 2005