Product Details

• Actors: Penn Jillette, Paul Provenza
• Format: Color, NTSC, Closed-captioned
• Language: English
• Region: Region 1 (U.S. and Canada only. Read more about DVD formats.)
  
• Aspect Ratio: 1.33:1
• Number of discs: 1
• Rated: NR (Not Rated)
• Studio: Velocity / Thinkfilm
• DVD Release Date: January 24, 2006
• Run Time: 89 minutes
• Average Customer Review: 3.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (275 customer reviews)
• ASIN: B000C3L2NE
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #21,312 in Movies & TV (See Top 100 in Movies & TV)
• For more information about "The Aristocrats" visit the Internet Movie Database (IMDb)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com

Released without a rating and billed as "the most vile, disgusting, and vulgar" film of all time, The Aristocrats is also funny enough to qualify as a minor comedy classic. We say "minor" only because hearing the same foul joke told by 100 celebrated comedians is inevitably exhausting, even though the shaggy-dog gag (a vintage in-joke among comedians, allowing outrageously obscene improvisation, and always ending with the same titular punchline) is also a fascinating litmus test for each comedian's irreverent style. As codirectors and show-biz insiders, veteran comedians Paul Provenza and Penn Jillette (from the comedy duo Penn & Teller) corralled an unprecedented parade of stand-up celebrities (George Carlin, Robin Williams, Drew Carey, Whoopi Goldberg, Sarah Silverman, the South Park kids and many, many more), each telling "the dirtiest joke of all time" in their own inimitable fashion. The sheer volume of vaudevillian vulgarity takes on a life of its own, more fascinating than funny, until Gilbert Gottfried (at a celebrity roast for Hugh Hefner, shortly after the terrorist attacks of 9/11/01) tells what is unanimously hailed as the definitive version of the joke. It's a matter of context, style, and bawdy bravado, and for better or worse, The Aristocrats will endure as a testament to a joke so bad--so uproariously bad--that no comedian worthy of the profession can resist the temptation to tell it. --Jeff Shannon

Product Description

Comedy veterans and co-creators Penn Jillette (one half of the hit duo Penn & Teller) and Paul Provenza capitalize on their insider status and invite over 100 of their closest friends (who happen to be some of the biggest names in entertainment, from George Carlin, Whoopi Goldberg, Drew Carey to Gilbert Gottfried, Bob Saget, Paul Reiser and Sarah Silverman) to reminisce, analyze and deliver their own versions of the world’s dirtiest joke, an old burlesque routine too extreme to be performed in public, called The Aristocrats. One of the smash hits of the 2005 Sundance film festival, this critically acclaimed, star-studded comedy extravaganza, which celebrates the art of improvisation and the finest (and most foul mouthed) traditions of stand up, is sure to stretch the limits of its audience, particularly for how loud and how long they can laugh.

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

54 of 57 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars One hundred comedians deconstruct the world's dirtiest joke, August 11, 2005

By 

Robert Moore (Chicago, IL USA) - See all my reviews
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WARNING: Spoilers galore and discussion of off color topics.

First, it has to be emphasized to anyone contemplating seeing this film that it without any question contains more offensive language than any other general release film in American history. If you are offended by graphic descriptions of every conceivable form of sexual perversion including incest and bestiality or by the most extreme descriptions of scatological activity, you really should pass on this one in favor of another film. That being said, this is without question one of the funniest films I have ever seen, and the preview audition I saw it with was laughing loudly from beginning to end.

"The Aristocrats" is, we are told near the beginning of the film, a joke that comedians often tell one another. In basic outline, it is quite simple. The basic elements are a man walking into a talent scout's office and telling him that he has a great act, and then describes a performance in which the man and his wife and children and other relatives, including the family dog, come onstage and perform some bizarre combination of sexual, incestuous, scatological, bestial, and murderous acts. After a long catalog of acts straight out of the Marquis de Sade, the scout then asks what they call themselves, to which the man replies, "The Aristocrats." The joke--admittedly not a very good one--is the extreme contrast between the barbarity and outrageousness of the acts, and the man having the gall to imagine that their actions could in any sense be aristocratic. This is not a joke that many comedians tell in public; it is simply too nasty, too extreme. It is, instead, a bit of a test that comedians take in front of other comedians, to see if they have a right to respect among their peers.

As the movie progresses, it becomes obvious that the challenge for comedians is to come up with some new variation of the joke that allows them some claim of originality. It is like a chess problem that requires some new resolution. Or, to put it in another sense, a comedian telling the joke anew is like a gunfighter taking on all previous gunslingers, creating a reputation for themselves. And indeed, as the movie goes along, a number of comedians do manage new variants that are increasingly surprising. Though obscene throughout, the film ends up being almost an academic, anthropological study of the nature and possibilities of humor.

A vast number (I read somewhere that a hundred comics participate) of well known and lesser known comedians appear in the film, from such prominent stand ups as Robin Williams and George Carlin to a host of unknowns, as well as older veterans such as Larry Storch and Tim Conway. A number provide their own retellings of the joke, with some being more successful than others. Although there are many quite hysterical versions of the joke, I thought four stood out. The best, in my opinion, was shockingly that of Bob Saggett of FULL HOUSE. His version is unique in that as he tells it, he feigns shock that he is doing so, and seems momentarily to have doubts as to its wisdom, hesitates, and then plunges right back into the joke. Very nearly as good is a somewhat less nasty, more cerebral version by Martin Mull, with the best punch line of the movie. No one hates mimes more than I do, but a mime I did not previously know called Bill the Mime performed a brilliantly obscene mime version of the joke. Finally, a truly awful ventriloquist (his mouth moved almost normally throughout) with a badly constructed puppet told the joke very ineptly, only to have his puppet jump in and show him the way it should be done. We get an endless variation on the joke, from Sarah Silverman's very strange rendition which morphs into an accusation of rape by Joe Franklin, to versions where the acts on stage are described as gentile and sophisticated, but the name of the act is unspeakably offensive.

This is very definitely not a movie for everyone. If you are easily offended, you should pass. But if you want to see a very, very funny movie that involves more comedians than you could shake a stage at, don't miss this.

191 of 230 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Utterly Brilliant -- and FAR more than just a dirty joke, September 1, 2005

By 

Scott E. Miller "author, director, composer" (St. Louis, MO USA) - See all my reviews
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This is a movie about one of the dirtiest jokes ever. But it's not really. It's really about the art of telling a joke. It's about the philosophy of comedy, of transgression, of challenging the rules of "polite society" as comics have done for centuries, about how the human mind works, how men and women see humor differently, about what we find funny, what surprises us, what revolts us, and more to the point, what DOESN'T revolt us even if it seems it should. And to discuss all these topics, the film makers have assembled a top flight group -- stand-up comedians, comedic actors, writers, and others, from old-time comics to the youngest and hippest new talents (is anyone funnier than Sarah Silverman when she really gets going?).

It's a free turtorial in how comedy works, as we watch a large and diverse group of artists tell this same joke in dozens of different ways, with many different set-ups, many different payoffs, and more ways of exploring the middle of the joke (some compare it to an improvised jazz solo) than you could ever imagine. We see how men and women emphasize different things, how the younger comics make it more sexual and the older comics make it more scatalogical. Somebody could teach a semster course on this...

It's a smart, insightful film about America and the American sense of humor, and about the real "us" that we rarely show the rest of the world. It's a fascinating philosophical document that will appall you even as you fall out of your seat laughing, and then drive home thinking about it for hours afterward.

35 of 39 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Not for Everyone--but perfect for the right folks, November 11, 2005

By 

K. E. Rayne "bookie" (Salisbury, MD United States) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Aristocrats (DVD)

I saw this film at a college theater in Ann Arbor, because I knew it would never come to the area where I live. It is the funniest and filthiest documentary ever made, about the funniest and filthiest joke ever told. One hundred comedians either tell the joke or comment on it or both. It's been an "in-thing" among comedians for years, and now at last it's out there for all to see. If your tolerance for scatalogical, sick, perverted humor is not high, don't even try to see it. It takes a strong stomach to listen to the joke as it becomes ever more depraved, but if you can take it, your sides will ache from laughter before it's over.