All in the family: "The Aristocrats"

Sometimes my wife surprises me. When I got "The Aristocrats" from Netflix, I figured yours truly would view this solo. Hey, it's not like I want to sit through "The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants" with her. But the other night, she said, "I'll watch 'The Aristocrats' with you." So there we were, on the couch as this documentary about comedians telling an old, filthy joke started to roll.

Then we got to George Carlin.

Relatively early in the movie, Carlin meanders into his version of the joke, and right about the time he says something about a guy pooping into his wife's mouth -- the guy's wife, not Carlin's, if that makes a difference -- my wife grimaced and said, "I don't think I can watch this." Yeah, that's what I thought, honey. And we hadn't even gotten to the father-daughter-dog sex yet.

"The Aristocrats" is about a joke about a family performance act that comedians have told over the years, mostly to each other, in "can you top this" fashion. The start and the punchline are same, but the middle varies from comic to comic. The only constant is that the family's act is (in normal company) unspeakably disgusting, featuring incest, excrement, violence ... you name it. This sets up the punchline: "What do you call it?" (Pause) "The Aristocrats!"

If that doesn't sound all that funny, well, it's not. The joke itself -- even with all the taboos -- is rather dated. But it's an institution, and that's what the movie -- directed by comedian Paul Provenza with on-screen help from comedian Penn Jillette -- tries to focus on. As such, we get dozens of comics talking about, and in some cases telling their versions of, the joke.

It's an impressive collection, and rather than throw out a bunch of names, here's the cast list from IMDB. We get old ones and young ones, TV folks and movie stars. If nothing else, it's fun to see these people in casual settings, just opining on the joke and related stuff. (Or, in the case of Kevin Pollack, telling the joke as Christopher Walken.) I could have done without all of the quick cuts within scenes -- in some cases, it looked like a weird, disjointed clip job -- and I'm not sure why some comics were in some settings, i.e. the guy telling the jokes while wearing workout clothes in a men's room, or a long-lens take of Steven Wright in a hotel room hallway.

While entertaining, "The Aristocrats" ultimately is little more than a one-note vanity project. Even with the array of comics, the premise gets a little old after a while, and I think the filmmakers could have included some actual research and insight on the history of comedy and the (declining) relevance of the joke over time.

True, we get a "South Park" version of the joke, as well as the staff writers of "The Onion" working on a version. And some of the comics theorize on certain elements of the joke, i.e. Why would the talent agent even want to know this disgusting act's name? But in the end, it's opinion and theory, and that's not so much documentary filmmaking as letting people talk. Still, if you want to see Bob Saget dish on incestual pedophilia, this is the movie for you.