G BABY'S REVIEW OF:
THE ARISTOCRATS

OPENING THOUGHTS

    So, this family walks into a talent agent's office and the dad says, "Boy oh boy! Have I got an act for you!" Then they all start having sex and pooping on each other. The talent agent says, "What do you call that act?" The dad says, "The Aristocrats!"  That's the joke. It's not that funny when I tell it because I'm not a stand up comedian. But when a real comedian tells the joke they'll say as many filthy details as they can instead of saying, "Then they all start having sex and pooping on each other." The more disgusting they can be, the better they are at telling the joke. This joke is never told to an audience; rather it's a kind of secret handshake between comedians.

ACTING

    JON STEWART wouldn't tell the joke. He did however have some funny stuff to say, even though they were only able to sneak in a quick interview while he was getting his make-up done. Jon Stewart is a very busy man. I got the feeling that they ambushed some of the bigger celebrities and they're only in the movie for a little bit because they didn't want to be a dick and say "no." For example, Chris Rock was only in the movie for maybe 15 seconds.
    BOG SAGET got caught right before one of his stand-up shows. He really didn't want to hurt his image, but the more he talked the more obscenities flowed out of his mouth. It was awesome.
    GILBERT GOTTFRIED was actually one of the funniest people in the movie. They actually got him to sit down and tell the joke. I never thought I'd hear Iago the parrot use the phrase "fist-fucking his daughter" so many times. And if he said, "Fucking and sucking" once he said it a thousand times. He was really funny though. And one of the more interesting parts of the movie was when they were talking about him telling jokes about 9/11 not too long after the attacks. The crowd turned on him and he didn't know what to do. So he told The Aristocrats joke and all other comedians knew exactly what he was doing and it was a great moment for all of them. It was stuff like this that was the most interesting. I felt kinda like this movie opened a door to the comedy world and let me take a peak inside.
    HOWIE MANDELsaid "cunt" probably more than 20 times. Even if you never see the movie, I wanted you to know that.
    THE SUPPORTING CAST of this movie consisted of 100 comedians who are interviewed. Some of them tell their versions of the joke and some of them just talk about the joke. Robin Williams was a bigger name. They caught him on the beach. Seriously I don't know how they found him. They must have used Penn's magic.

DIRECTION AND SCRIPT

    PAUL PROVENZA directed this movie. He shot about 180 hours of raw footage over several years just using video. If you know that that, you might think to yourself, "Man, he did an amazing job sorting through all that and piecing it together to make a coherent documentary." If you didn't know all that however, you might think to yourself, "Man, this isn't a very coherent documentary." Overall it's just not a very visually pleasing package. It's choppy and dirty looking and it has some pacing issues. But its strong point is the content. It has a lot of really funny people pushing the envelope as far as they can and a lot of it is very funny. This joke was an interesting thing to make a documentary about because it's something that only people in the comedy world knew about. And as the movie shows there is definitely an art to telling it. It doesn't really focus on that enough though. The main problem I had with it is that I couldn't really tell what it was focusing on at all. I understand how hard it must have been to put this all together, but I can't judge it based on how hard it was. If I did that then calculus would be the best movie ever.

THE VERDICT

    This movie ain't pretty, but it's got some funny stuff in it. If you're interested in comedy you should watch this movie. Or if you just want to see some comedians say a bunch of dirty words you should watch this movie. Don't watch it if you're easily offended though. Ask yourself this: Is a mime acting out an abortion funny? If yes, then get the DVD and watch the special features.
 
 

RATING: C +

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