21 September 2008

Guy walks into a talent agency . . .

The Aristocrats

(2005)

No, wait: a succession of relief pitchers walk in from the Mets bullpen and, as a group, perform a succession of metaphorically scatological and obscene acts . . .

Yes, it's true: for the second straight Sunday night, I selected my evening's entertainment as a way of finding consolation for baseball disappointment. This time, just flat-out laughter was the prescription. And it worked, mostly, though as you might guess, my fourth viewing in the slightly more than three years since its release produced the least laughter so far. This time, the only tellings of the joke itself that convulsed me were the ones most relying on something other than language--the card-trick version, e.g., the mime. The most outrageous of the others--Bob Sagat's, Gilbert Gottfried's--barely got a laugh. (And for the record, I've always thought Gottfried's shtick at the table early in the film is funnier than his much ballyhooed Friars Roast performance.) Still, this film at its least effective still makes me laugh more than . . . well, than any comedy I've seen in a theater this year, I'm sure. And I still have the extras to work out to.

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