The Aristocrats (2005)

The joke's not funny -- it's just a set-up and a punchline. The teller stuffs the "in-between" with the nastiest stuff the (s)he can think of. Shock and disgust can sometimes provoke a laugh on its own, but it never does here. I mean, a story about sliding through excrement and fornicating with small children and animals could only be funny once...and I imagine you'd have to be kind of drunk even then.

There are exactly two great tellings in this film: Wendy Liebman's, which turns the joke on its head (her deadpan delivery is fantastic, though the filmmakers dampen the originality of the moment by then showing a few additional examples of the joke being told from this opposite angle) and Sarah Silverman's, which turns it into an inappropriate and uncomfortable personal anecdote. All of the others just blend together.

D-