Fuck aka F**k

Fuck
Billy Connolly, Janeane Garofalo, Drew Carey
Sam Donaldson, Michael Medved, many others
Directed by Steve Anderson
ThinkFilm 2007
90 minutes

Fuck sucks. You would think a documentary about the most famous four letter word in the English language would somehow find a way to be entertaining but f**k no. It features pretty much the same cast of comedy stars as the great The Aristocrats, uses the same quick cut many guests approach to documentary film making, and fails miserably to interest the viewer. The only interesting thing about the Fuck DVD is that Amazon lists it as F**k.

You would expect a documentary that includes Miss Manners and Ron Jeremy, Pat Boone and Ice-T would manage to interest the viewer but it ends up as lame at the George Plympton animations that sometimes show up on the Fuck DVD. I still have no idea what Ron Jeremy is doing in this documentary (and how rare is it not to know what Ron Jeremy is doing in a movie?) while it is clear Pat Boone is there as everybody’s favorite straw man.

The most annoying thing about F**k is how parochial it is. Aside from Billy Connolly and a scene from a couple doing the deed on stage for the rain forest in, as the filmmaker puts it “Europe”, not even bothering to find out where exactly in that vast nation the scene took place, this documentary is all about US. F is a word used throughout the English speaking word and used by people who speak English as a second language but all you get here is one country’s problem with it.

The only really interesting segment here is the one about Lenny Bruce’s legal problems for using profanity on stage and Carlin’s battle with the FCC following the airing of the track Filthy Words from Occupation Foole. Unfortunately, Lenny Bruce is dead so all you get is biographer Jonathan Goldstein busting a nut about Bruce while Carlin is there only in concert footage.

There are a few linguists inserted here and there in Fuck but they are basically there to give a serious veneer to this documentary DVD. Unfortunately, all this is but the thinnest of veneers. In fact, this documentary is much more interested in bashing Bush, the American right wing, and other similar nut jobs. It also quickly runs out of steam so director Steve Anderson inserts a whole bunch of clips from the movies, American movies of course, where Fuck is used so a few critics can comment on it.

Even more annoying is the special features section gives you the option of removing the fuck counter and it doesn’t work so you are fucking stuck looking at this annoying and amateurish looking little red counter that gets in the way, especially in the last scene where it ironically bleeps out some written uses of the word.

Fuck does not stand for fornication under command of the king but Fundamentally Uninteresting Crappy Kluge.

 

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