The Last Laugh

Although one has an innate sense going into this documentary that there is no simple answer to the question of “Can we joke about the Holocaust?” there does seem to be a discernible consensus that is eventually arrived at: namely, it's okay to make jokes about the Final Solution but only if they're really funny. Director Ferne Pearlstein's impressive interviewee list of comedians and performers includes Carl and Rob Reiner, Sarah Silverman, Mel Brooks, Robert Clary, and Judy Gold, among others, who all chip in with fairly predictable opinions on the subject. But it's the Holocaust survivors—such as Renee Firestone—whose wizened perspectives hold the most weight for obvious reasons. Firestone herself remembers moments of laughter and humor among the hellish suffering of the concentration camps and has fairly open-minded views on jokes about the Holocaust. However, she does find most contemporary comedians' attempts at racy ethnic jokes—Larry David's and Silverman's in particular—to be lame and unfunny. And many of her fellow Holocaust survivors feel that the Final Solution should be kept a taboo subject. If any sort of guiding principle can be taken away here it's that jokes about the Nazis themselves (Mel Brooks's The Producers being a shining example) work better than jokes (like Silverman's) that would seem to ridicule the victims. Even though it sometimes raises more questions than answers, The Last Laugh is an often fascinating exploration of a controversial subject. Recommended. Aud: C, P. (M. Sandlin)