“A man walks into a talent agent’s office and says that he has an act…”

Andie’s rating: The @r!$t0(r@t$ is the funniest freakin’ thing I’ve ever seen

Andie’s review: Okay, so this review took a lot longer to write than I thought it would, mostly because I was all nervous about making a cameo appearance at the Mutant Headquarters But here I am and I will do my very best to convey to everybody what an absolute pop-shooting-out-your-nose-mouth-dropping-open-with-shock-struggling-to-breathe-because-of-laughing-too-hard amazing 90 minutes of cinema that is The Aristocrats.

So, the premise of this movie is that there’s a joke called The Aristocrats that dates back to the days of Vaudeville and is an inside joke among comedians. The gist of the joke is, “A man walks into a talent agency and says to the talent agent, ‘I got a great act for you.’ And the talent agent says, ‘What do you do?’ and the man says, ‘I walk out on stage and poop in a bucket.’ And the agent says, ‘What do you call this act?” and the man says, ‘The Aristocrats.’ Except the catch is that when I put in “I walk out on stage and poop in a bucket,” that is the part of the joke where the teller inserts the grossest, foulest, most obscene thing he or she can think of. (And if you think the men have the market cornered on this joke, you should hear Judy Gold’s version.). For the movie The Aristocrats, Paul Provenza and Penn Gillette went around to over 100 of Hollywood’s most famous comedians and taped them talking about the joke and telling their versions of it. And there are two great reasons why this works so amazingly well.

Firstly, it is an absolute riot to hear what comes out of these people’s mouths. Everything you could possibly imagine that is offensive is included by someone. I won’t even get into them here because, 1) this is a PG-13 rated site and this movie is as far removed from PG-13 as Lindsey Lohan is from sobriety, health, and good movies and 2) because, frankly, the shock of what they say is partly what makes it so funny. What also makes it so fabulous is that everybody who sees this will have different people that they thought were the best ones, which is awesome. For me, the best ones included Gregg Rogell, magician Eric Mead, the animated South Park version, Susie Essman, and Sara Silverman. There were also a few comedians who turned the joke on its head and did it backwards, with the act being clean and the title being the “Bleep-bleeping bleepity-bleeps,” Wendy Liebman’s being the funniest of those versions. But hands down, the highlight of the movie for me was Bob Saget. (And let me tell you, a sentence I never thought I’d type is “The dad from ‘Full House’ was the funniest part.”) But his version is so dirty and so contradictory to his image that I thought I was going to stroke out from laughing so hard. I can no longer hear the term cock-eyed without giggling like a freak.

The second, and more important, reason why this movie works so well is that I left the theatre feeling like I had just been let in on a huge Hollywood secret. Before this movie, I had never heard of this joke. But it turns out that it’s like the secret handshake of comedians. It’s been around forever. In the interviews, a lot of people acknowledge that it really isn’t that funny of a joke. It’s ironic that a foul, offensive act would be called “The Aristocrats,” but the punch line isn’t that hilarious. What makes it so funny is how scarily offensive people can be and how long they can go on telling the joke. There were interviews about parties where comedians would one-up each other by telling the joke for an hour or more at a time! Anyway, I left the theatre with a huge appreciate for the historical significance of the joke and immensely self-satisfied, as if I was now part of some elite club.

So, if you haven’t already picked up on this, this movie may not be for everybody. In fact, even though I tend to regard myself as someone who feels that teenagers can handle a lot more than people think, this definitely should have the NC-17 rating on it. Also, there are many, many adults who would hate this film. You have to go into it prepared for what it is and you need to be someone who is not easily offended. ‘Cause if you are easily offended, you won’t last two minutes. If you’re not, though, this will probably be the funniest 90 minutes of your entire life. I especially recommend watching it with a group of like-minded, unoffendable people because that makes it just that much more fun. This definitely packed more laughs per minute than any other movie I’ve ever seen.