The Aristocrats

***Note***
There is no way that I can spoil this movie. Read on and Enjoy.
***EndNote***

The Aristocrats had the tagline "No nudity, No violence and Unspeakable obscenity". It is the perfect hook. What looked like a movie showing the progression of humour and joke telling from the Vaudeville age to the present turned out to be 75 of todays most recognizable comedians giving thier two cents or not about this joke that has a fixed beginning and end but the middle segment is whatever you want it to be. This is the joke that comedians tell other comedians to stretch their imaginations and push the envelope after the censors have gone home to their warm milk and Family Circus comics.

Being a documentary, I expected a few stylistic cues like a progression from person to person or idea to idea but it turned out to be very much like the Joke. The beginning and the end were laid out before we knew what the middle was and the next 79 minutes was the explanation.

The language was foul beyond belief. If you like the profanity then this is certainly a movie for you. It got so bad there were two instances where people left the theatre. The funny thing was that they had lasted through the worst and they were moving on to what would be the tamer ending.

The editing also ground my nerves raw. They could not get a whole cut of the joke. The camera man always started cracking up or someone would chime in with a tidbit of info or they would just cut the scene and never come back to it. They tell you the joke of course but they leave the middle part mostly to your imagination. The movie is more about the reaction to the joke rather than the joke itself.

I thought there were some good points to the film: Lewis Black, Bob Saget and Penn&Teller, but its definitely not one that I could recommend to anyone other than those who like grossout humour. All things considered, I give this film a 3/10 or a 1.5 star rating. It does have some of the funny but not enough to save the film from floundering.