After the success of last year's "The Aristocrats," it seemed kind of obvious that a lot of docs about humor and language might be made. "Fuck" is just such a film. But instead of being a "talking head" kind of film, with pundits and linguists discussing the word in an intellectual and cerebral way, filmmaker Steve Anderson covers a much broader spectrum in his visual document.

The film begins drably enough with a well abused 50's adult educational film called "Perversion for Profit" which I have seen so many times, I could almost recite it by heart. Thankfully, this doesn't last long and the film opens quickly into the exploration of the world's seemingly most offensive expletive. There are a lot of talking head type interviews here including linguists and historians but also the likes of Hunter S. Thompson, porn stars, Alan Keyes, Janeane Garofalo, Dennis Prager, Sam Donaldson, Bill Maher, Miss Manners, Billy Connolly (who calls the word "Fuck" an onomatopoeia"), Steven Bochco, Drew Carrey, Alanis Morissette, Ice T, Pat Boone, Ron Jeremy, Chuck D, Kevin Smith, the lead singer of Biohazard, Dave Marsh, and Michael Medved (the latter of which I wish would drop dead of cancer). There are also your typical "man in the street" interviews (as well as some clown in the street, literally, interviews).

Most of these interviews are fairly typical and rarely insightful. It's much more fun to watch Pat Boone make an ass of himself as a media whore here (I bet if you showed up at his house with a video camera, he would talk to you for hours). Still, "Fuck" has the capacity to make the audience laugh (especially when Connolly is talking) and that in itself makes it worth watching.

Filmmaker Steve Anderson uses simple animations by Bill Plympton as well as quotes on title cards to discuss not only the word and its origins but also the way it is referenced when someone gives the finger, someone says "Fuck off," as well as the way it is used in music and TV.

Of course, the word could not be discussed with mentioning Lenny Bruce and George Carlin and these two noteworthy comedians are shown in clips as are news stories which reference Bono, Janet Jackson, and Howard Stern.

Notes:

Dedicated to Hunter S. Thompson,

The film's soundtrack is made up of songs with the word "fuck" in the lyrics.

Viewed at the Paramount Theater in March of 2006 at SXSW. Filmmaker Steve Anderson was in attendance and did a Q&A where he said that they had considered several titles for the film and decided to go with "Fuck" in order to see how different media organizations would deal with such a title. The filmmaker's own marketing material replaces the "U" with a solid star. SXSW's material all refers to the title completely. Fandango.com (the nation's largest movie ticket selling website) referred to it in its full title on the showtimes of Austin for 3/10/06. The Paramount marquee used two punctuation letters to replace the "UC" in the middle of the word. We here at Filethirteen are, of course, unafraid to use such a word on our site (it's contained in many of my reviews as a matter of fact).

Report Card

Content: A+

Completeness: B-

Cinematography/Lighting: C

Special Effects/Make Up: C

Music: C

Final Grade: B+