I Politely Disagree...

Sometimes the irony is overwhelming. I've absolutely been dying to see The Aristocrats since it premiered at Sundance last year. The fact that unless you are able to see the dirty/unrated comedy during Sundance, chances are good the conservative (ahem, Mormon) politics of Utah are going to be able to keep movies of the like out of its state. Anyway, that's a whole other tangent. Instead, I'm going to rant about my adoration of the movie, which I finally saw, thanks to Netflix.

Here's the scoop: the reviews I read a year ago are so spot on I'm shocked; Sarah Silverman is amazing; Bob Saget is ridiculous; when Gilbert Godfried performs it at the Friar's Club Roast shortly after 9/11 it is probably the funniest telling of the joke in the movie.

My friend Matt Kaszanek, whom I trust with all things movie related more than anyone other than Nate, didn't like it. And this is why I'll argue with him. I was expecting the movie to be an absolute riot. It's not. It's more a disecting of a joke. And not just any joke, but a comedian's joke. More than that, it's an analysis of how comedians tell the joke, like can it be more or less crude if a woman tells it, or how does race come into it; and maybe most important of all, is shit funnier than sex/incest? Maybe the fact that I've been obsessively curious about it for damn near 12 months plays into the fact that I really liked it. But as a girl who loves documentaries more than she'd care to admit, it was exactly what I was looking for.

If I had to seek out a complaint (and okay, as the critic that I am, it wasn't hard), I didn't like how sometimes the cameramen (aka Paul Provenza or Penn) would laugh at the joke as the person was telling it. And really it's not that so much as if you're going to be laughing at a joke, you should be on-screen. So, do it like a legit interview where you say, "Dude, Bob Saget, tell the f-ing dirtiest joke on the planet, to me, Penn, and I'll sit here and egg you on, but if I'm laughing it's okay, because I'm on-screen and not some obscure voice that is both making Bob Saget laugh and not tell his goddamned joke and taking away from the scene where Bob Saget tells his goddamned joke about raping his son in an empty eye socket with a flattened penis..."

Anyway, there's not a lot in this world that I love more than analysis, so that helped me like it. The only other thing I'll mention is that I was disappointed that no one told me that Cartman tells the joke while the kids are waiting for the bus (specially made for this movie, not a part of South Park). If it's at all possible to download that part, I wholeheartedly recommend it.

Um, so yeah, next on the list of Netflix movies is Chinatown and I will be eagerly awaiting another 2005 Sundance documentary Murderball. And to give Matt Kaszanek some credit, I did add Junebug as well. If you ever want to recommend something, please feel free, but be forewarned that I have about 16 books on my to-read list and about 82 movies on my Netflix queue. It may be some time before I get to anything. Did I mention that I'm knitting a pillow to be felted? And I subscribe to four magazines? And I have a full-time job? And I have some friends that I don't call on the phone when I should? And despite living in North Dakota, I have made some friends who I occasionally like to spend time with? God, what am I doing wasting time telling all you people what I think about things? I'm going to read comics (Kingdom Come) and go to bed.

In the words of Eric Cartman, "Screw you guys, I'm going home."