A.V. Club Blog

from our own Nathan Rabin) and staggering box office ($250,000 in four theaters!),

The Aristocrats appears to

be turning into the latest documentary sensation. But at the risk of undermining

a colleague’s opinion for the second post straight (it won’t continue

fellas, I promise) I feel compelled to offer a dissenting vote. Much of my disappointment

comes in relation to the subject matter, which is impossibly rich: Through the

telling of one joke—a filthy vaudeville gag that’s been passed along

and improvised from one generation of comedian to the next—the film touches

on the fraternity between performers, the immense diversity of comedic invention

and delivery, and the constant shift in societal standards, for which this joke

functions as a sort of litmus test. For this occasion, directors/comedians Paul

Provenza and Penn Jillette have gathered a Rolodex full of the brightest (and

in the cases of Carrot Top and Bruce Villanch, not so brightest) comic minds in

America to offer some perspective and their own perverted twist on the joke.

The Aristocrats has the rough quality of a home movie, as if Provenza

and Jillette are inviting the audience to peek into some secret underground society

that operates well outside the acceptable bounds of taste. It all sounds great

and occasionally it is, but I can’t imagine a crummier documentary being

made from such a wealth of good footage. To give you an idea of what the cutting

is like, here’s what Provenza and Jillette would have made of the above

sentence: Cut to Paul Reiser (“It all sounds great and occasionally it is”),

cut to Richard Lewis (“but I can’t imagine a crummier documentary”),

cut to Sarah Silverman (“being made from such a wealth of good footage").

Pretty annoying, huh? For awhile, I was expecting things to slow down a bit; with

dozens of comedians on the slate, the film admittedly has a lot of introductions

to get out of the way. But the spastic editing never really stops, and it caused

my brain to shut down in the same way it does when I watch a Jerry Bruckheimer

movie. What’s lost is the precious continuity of individual performances:

This joke has a distinct three-act structure, with a special emphasis on the second,

but only a few comedians are allowed to tell it in full before Provenza and Jillette

cut away to someone else. And how effective can a joke be when it’s constantly

interrupted midstream? It’s no coincidence that the funniest segments in

the film are the ones that allow great comedians to simply tell the joke in full:

Steven Wright, George Carlin, an inspired South Park sketch by Trey Parker and

Matt Stone. The rest is just chewed-up hash.