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Comedians dissect dirty joke in ‘The Aristocrats’
By CRAIG OUTHIER
GET OUT
Anyone who's suffered through an episode of “Full House” or — ick — “America's Funniest Home Videos” will enjoy a diabolical gust of satisfaction when squeaky-clean TV dad Bob Saget tells the world's dirtiest joke in “The Aristocrats.” It's a little like watching a televangelist confess to adultery and embezzlement. Good, good stuff.

“The Aristocrats” isn't about Saget — it's about the joke, and never has something so obscene, so disgusting been scrutinized so lovingly. If nothing else, comic-turned-documentary filmmaker Paul Provenza has given several dozen comedians the opportunity to exercise their constitutionally guaranteed freedom to get as filthy as they wanna get.

If you haven't heard the joke — shared privately by comics since the days of vaudeville — it goes something like this: A man and his family walk into a talent agent's office and show him their act. After committing, shall we say, intimate acts upon one another, they ask for his opinion. When the aghast agent asks what they call the act, the father delivers the punch line: “The Aristocrats!”

Not a great punch line, but that's the point. What makes it funny is the way the comics — including George Carlin, Robin Williams, Sarah Silverman and Drew Carey — embellish the unmentionable middle. One interview subject likens it to a piece of jazz music: Standard opening and closing, with free-riffing in between. Ingeniously, magician/comic Eric Mead performs it with a deck of cards. Mario Cantone does a spot-on Carol Channing impersonation while telling it. And, maybe funniest of all, old Larry Storch (“F-Troop”) recites it with a toffee-nosed British accent.

It's a tour de force of foulness, and truth be known, it gets a little tired after, oh, the first 50 minutes or so. And something else happens: The free-range scatology and perverse sexuality is so over-the-top, so gratuitous, that “The Aristocrats” creates a sort of black hole effect, emerging on the other side, if not purified, then oddly inoffensive. It's meta-lewd.

The Aristocrats
Starring: Robin Williams, Penn Jillette, Jon Stewart, Dana Gould, Whoopi Goldberg,
Drew Carey
Rating: Unrated (profanity)
Running time: 89 minutes
Playing: Opens Friday at Harkins Valley Art theater in Tempe and Harkins Camelview theater in Scottsdale
GRADE: B