This is different kind to one-joke movies like The Family Stone which rely on pushing the same gag until someone finally laughs. Instead, veteran comedian turned filmmaker Paul Provenza has assembled 100 stand-up comedians to tell the same disgusting joke, one hundred times. It's a subtle difference, but an important one. The Aristocrats has been a staple of stand-up comedy since the first caveman stood in front of a campfire to tell a joke. It become notorious as the funny man’s secret weapon; if you could tell The Aristocrats and get away with it, the future was of the sunny-and-shades variety. In truth, the joke isn’t all that funny: man walks in to an agent’s office and talks up his thoroughly low brow and fully repugnant act, only to reveal it’s called The  Aristocrats. Tada! But like all jokes, it’s in the telling and this is where The Aristocrats scores.

Like the comedy equivalent of jazz, The Aristocrats turns on improvisation. Thus the cream of comedy have been assembled to retell the greatest dirty joke ever told, in increasingly lurid tones and decreasingly acceptable taste. Chris Rock, Robin Williams, Hank Azaria, Whoopi Goldberg, Paul Reiser, Phyllis Diller, Jason Alexander, Eddie Izzard, Cartman and Billy Connolly join another ninety jokers to give it their best and explain why it’s so funny. Which, depending on your taste for foul-mouthed vulgarity, it is. Cinematically speaking, this is something of an indulgence piece that will work better as a feature on The Comedy Channel. But if you’re in need of an obscenity fix, ditch the family and seek the crass, cruel company of the Aristocrats.

// COLIN FRASER