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Pretty Good

Pretty good movie overall. First half was nothing special but it got better as it went along.

This is a must-see and one of the best documentaries - and films - of this year.

The movie turns out to be a little better than the average. Starting from a romantic formula often seen in the cinema, it ends in the most predictable (and somewhat bland) way.

Paul Provenza and producer Penn Jillette bring an inside joke among comedians to the outside world. There's a family who performs a disgusting outlandish offensive act with their dog in front of a person. After the act, the persons ask what the act is called. They reply "The Aristocrats".It is essentially a bad joke. The reason for the love is that the performer is allowed to come up with the most outrageous inappropriate ideas. Honestly most of the jokes are not funny although it's probably funny for these comedians who have heard it all before. It is insane material that would never be used in any actual act. It's an insight into the world of comedians. The best one is probably Sarah Silverman who incorporates her family as the actual performers. She does it as a naive innocent girl although her punchline is "Joe Franklin raped me". Carrie Fisher does it with her famous parents. Gilbert Gottfried doing the roast after 9/11 is the most compelling piece of story. The DVD commentary adds more background to the comedy and the various comedians.

Every time I have seen this film over the years I have to admit to finding it progressively less funny each time. It's a documentary that is barely about anything if we are honest. It's about a joke called 'The Aristocrats' that has seemingly been around for decades, yet only comics seem to know about it. There isn't any information provided about how it originated, most probably because like most jokes it just evolved from somewhere by chance and others latched on to it. Anyway, the joke itself is simple. A new act visit a promoters office and describe to him their routine, it's an appallingly offensive act described in graphic detail. At the end the shocked promoter asks what their name is and they reply 'The Aristocrats' with a flourish. You see what I mean, it's completely unfunny and on paper a non-joke. But the way it works is for the description of the act to be as inventively offensive as possible allowing the comedian to riff on the basic idea and to be as creative as possible.The humour all seems to be about shock value and for me this can get a bit wearing. Comic after comic tells a similar retelling of the joke where they try like crazy to be on the edge. But all most of them are essentially doing is being as disgusting and as offensive as possible, which ultimately is about as funny as a punch in the throat. The format of the film means that comics tell the joke to other comics and there is an unfortunate self-satisfied air to proceedings with everybody laughing like crazy at their own outrageousness. An alarming number just try to be offensive with nothing else on offer, including a guy who has to be the worst ventriloquist I have had the misfortune of seeing.But some people rise above the material and elicit actual laughs. George Carlin mentioned that comedy was all about surprise and it's the ones that achieve this that work best. Billy the Mime is funny because of the sheer strangeness and originality of performing the joke via mime artistry. Wendy Liebman subverts the joke by reversing it, where the act itself is super sweet but with a name that is super offensive – when Liebmen delivers this it's one of the funniest moments in the film because it's simply unexpected. Jake Johannsen deconstructs the situation and wonders why the promoter even wants to know the name of the act in the first place and questions why the participants are not in prison or on death row. Sarah Silverman turns things around by telling an anecdote from the point of view of being a real-life participant. While Gilbert Gottfried's telling of the joke is so refreshing simply because he has an actual real audience to work with and is not simply telling it to easily pleased fellow comedians – at last we see how the joke can work in the context of a paying audience. But perhaps the key moment was when Dick Smothers told Tom Smothers a version of the joke. Tom wasn't aware of it and was completely perplexed by it thinking it utterly unfunny and pointless. It was one of the most honest and funny moments in the film and one that most people would experience if they were to be told the joke for the first time with no prompting.

I went to see "The Aristocrats" after reading the glowing reviews in the NY Times and elsewhere. In retrospect I now find that the reviews were somewhat hyperbolic. Sure, I did laugh my head off at certain parts, e.g. George Carlin's ad-lib pile on of gross-out physiological details, Bob Saget cracking up as he is trying to tell his own foul version of the venerable joke, Mario Cantone's Liza impersonation, Kevin Pollak's doing a Chris Walken rendition, Gilbert Gottfried's cathartic retelling (soon after 9/11), and Billy the Mime's 'telling' of the joke, which I found to be pure genius -- it may even make me reconsider my aversion for mimes. Another very impressive 'telling' was done by a prestidigitator through the manipulation of cards.Chris Rock, one of the smartest comedians around, appears briefly in the movie, not to tell his version of the joke, but to comment on why a black audience might not find it all that funny: black comedians, he explains, were able to "work blue" way before whites since they were excluded from radio and TV in the early days, and therefore they didn't have to watch what they said.And it was a very pleasant surprise to see old-timers like Shelley Berman, Larry Storch, Tim Conway -- and Chuck McCann (remember him?)But some comics contributed absolutely nothing to the movie: Eddie Izzard's incoherent ramblings should have been edited out, as should have Emo Philips' vapid remarks -- why is this guy in show business anyway? Another non-funny comic was Don Rickles (whom I personally haven't found funny in a L O N G time). Phyllis Diller also added nothing except her name and famous guffaw -- and her uncovered arms can gross you out (Hey, maybe THAT was part of the joke!)My main complaint about the movie is that in their attempts to make the joke as disgusting as possible, some comics ventured into very disturbing territory, such as incest of unspeakable variations between parents and their young children. This sort of thing is neither witty, funny, or creative. Apparently I wasn't the only one to have this reaction judging from the silence (or embarrassed giggles) of the rest of the audience whose laughter stopped at such moments.On the other hand, two comedians, including Andy Richter, telling this disgusting joke to their respective toddlers, who couldn't possibly understand them, was a truly hilarious bit.

Um, wow, I feel sort of like the last sane man, I'm reading tons and tons of praise for a movie that essentially is the equivalent of thinking it's funny that penis, rape and incest are clearly defined in a dictionary, tee he, seriously? And for 90 minutes! I couldn't get through it, I was bored! My appreciation for my own time was very offended but jeez, from a political viewpoint, by most, I would be considered an extreme liberal with borderline heathen and hedonistic ideals on freedom and the use thereof, but this?! I'm glad we live in a society where even this garbage can be widely produced, great, fine, but I wouldn't want to watch this at length any more than I would want to watch scenes of staged violence and brutality over and over and over again. The level of immaturity to me and the whole composition of the movie would be like making a movie about a brutal child rape scene and having different directors and different actors portraying it in different ways throughout, if you think that's funny, you'll love this movie. I think the jokes on the public at large, if you like this sort of thing, that's disturbing, if you don't like it, you're a snob? If that's the case I've never been more proud to be a snob, wow, what a great waste of time, surely these talented individuals can find something better to do with their time. This seems like a failed attempt at high art and if there's anything I hate more than high art it's a failed attempt at it.