A dirty joke done right

The Aristocrats (2005)
Directed by Paul Provenza. 89 mins. Not rated.

3 stars

Call it growing up in the age of rampant sex and violence, but there’s little that makes me squeamish at the movie theater. “The Aristocrats,” a documentary about a dirty joke’s etymology, seriously challenged my blasé disposition.

The joke itself merits a documentary’s worth of discussion. So I don’t lose you to the stacks, here’s an approximate form:
A man walks into a talent agency and pitches a family act. In his description, he tells of various scatological, incestuous, bestial and sadomasochistic routines, all performed by the family.

After hearing of these unspeakable acts, the agent says, “That’s one heck of an act. What do you call it?”

The man replies, “The Aristocrats!”

Since the film seems to be the inspiration of Teller’s cohort, Penn Jillette, and outfitted with the nation’s best comedic talents, the audience is never quite sure what in this documentary is fact-based and what’s a litmus test of our gullibility.

We’re told only this: “The Aristocrats” officially appears in an anthology of dirty jokes and its various forms are at the complete mercy of the comedian.

The film suggests that the joke provides a peek into the dark, disturbingly perverted reaches of a comedian’s soul by what grotesque descriptions of sex, violence and biological functions are added or emphasized.

When the documentary starts to get too full of itself, it unleashes an avalanche of humorists, each providing their own frank recountings of the joke. Many, like New Yorkers George Carlin and Paul Reiser, attempt to improvise the joke. The result is a worthy mixture of groans and guffaws, usually with additional laughs for any blown endings or tangents into nowhere.

Some comics actually afford the documentary’s its inherent legitimacy, like Phyllis Diller and Don Rickles. Still others, like Robin Williams and Lewis Black, are just looking for a quick goof and seem rather uninterested in joke or the documentary that it catalyzed.

Much is made of the testosterone-fueled descriptions that plague a good telling of “The Aristocrats,” so it’s surprising that the film’s biggest scene stealer is Sarah Silverman, the decidedly un-PC New Englander.

She gives the inquiry a mock seriousness, placing herself in “The Aristocrats” story, as if she were once part of a family that would subject itself to such depravities. The payoff is too involved and too precious to ruin here; let’s just say laughing at it tells us perhaps more about ourselves than the person telling it.