The premise behind the film The Aristocrats is that about 100 comedians all tell the same joke. It is not a very good joke. However it is a joke where the middle section is basically just a long scatalogical trawl through whatever the teller thinks will offend the audience or be funny. The idea is to show that it is – as the film suggests “the singer, not the song”. Comedians are funny, not jokes.
Well the joke they pick is not funny. But then comedians don’t really tell jokes anyway. So the film is a little bit disingenuous as it clearly becomes a love-in for US comedians. What is clear is that the basic joke itself (which is not very funny) could be made structurally funnier by improving the punchline.
What let’s the Aristocrats down (and by the way, that is the punchline) is that bar six of the comedians, we only see excerpts of them telling the joke. Perhaps on the DVD we will get them all. However the constant intercutting and interruption of the individual tellings seems to obscure the point of the film. It may well be that a lot of these comedians versions would be similar, and it may be repetitive and dull. But when one of the six versions is in mime, and one is by Paul Reiser, you tend to hope that you could see some of the better ones which are just hinted at. Paul Reiser is very smug about his telling, which is funny clearly because it is the worst. (Sarah Silverman’s is the best that you see all of.)
Anyway, I am pitching a film called, “What’s Brown And Sticky?”