This review originally appeared in my original online home. This wasn’t the first full review I posted there, but I tend to think of this as the piece that made me decide I was going to commit to writing about film on a regular basis in that space. I felt more like I was tinkering with the previous reviews I’d included there (including my assessment of The Constant Gardener, which this was coupled with, explained the “Then there…” that opens the review), but this effort helped me rediscover the pleasure of grappling with a movie, breaking apart what did and didn’t work with it. Plain and simple, this is me finding my way back.

Then there is The Aristocrats. It’s a simple joke. It’s really not very funny or clever. But the joke is really just a tool to explore the nature of comedy itself, to make the point that it’s the singer not the song. Co-producer Penn Jillette compares comedy to jazz, citing John Coltrane, and the film makes the case that it’s a rock-solid comparison. Just as “My Favorite Things” can be a sugary-sweet two-minute distraction from a lounge singer (or Julie Andrews), or it can be a fifteen-minute deconstruction and reconstruction in the hands of Coltrane himself, so too can the title joke be blandly profane (Howie Mandel), giddily, triumphantly profane (Bob Saget) or just another crack in the eggshell of reality (Steven Wright). Director (and kinda crummy stand up comic, as I recall) Paul Provenza serves his film best when he calms it down a little bit, and simply cedes the floor to the smarter people on camera. Too often, he edits like crazy, as if he lacks confidence in just letting someone go. Saget’s extended riff on the joke would have been much better (though, it’s pretty damn good anyway) without Provenza constantly cutting away mid-delivery to other people telling us about what the typical Saget version of the joke is like. Just giving George Carlin a few uninterrupted minutes to discourse on the nature of comedy would have been invaluable. In fact, someone should make a whole movie on George Carlin explaining comedy before it’s too late. Despite the fact that Provenza doesn’t quite have the skill to tie his film together in a cohesive, meaningful way, there are telling moments throughout. For example, there may be no more insightful illustration of the difference between telling jokes and what comedians really do than Sarah Silverman’s take, which stays absolutely true to the boundary-pushing spirit of the exercise but transforms the joke into an actual routine, tinged by innocence, sadness and dark revelation.