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2016
Directed by Ferne Pearlstein
Synopsis
Feature documentary about humor and the Holocaust, examining whether it is ever acceptable to use humor in connection with a tragedy of that scale, and the implications for other seemingly off-limits topics in a society that prizes free speech.
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- Cast
- Crew
- Details
- Genres
- Releases
Cast
Sarah Silverman Mel Brooks Rob Reiner David Cross Gilbert Gottfried Judy Gold Carl Reiner Robert Clary Etgar Keret Alan Zweibel Susie Essman Larry Charles Harry Shearer David Steinberg Lisa Lampanelli Jason Alexander Woody Allen John Banner Sacha Baron Cohen Roberto Benigni Jack Benny Lenny Bruce Louis C.K. George Carlin Dave Chappelle Bob Crane Russell Crowe Larry David Warwick Davis Show All…
DirectorDirector
Ferne Pearlstein
ProducersProducers
Adrienne Collatos Jamie Lauren Davis Anne Etheridge Amy Hobby Anne Hubbell Ferne Pearlstein Yelena Rachitsky
WritersWriters
Robert Edwards Ferne Pearlstein
EditorEditor
Ferne Pearlstein
CinematographyCinematography
Ferne Pearlstein
LightingLighting
John Roney
Additional PhotographyAdd. Photography
Jeremiah Kent
Visual EffectsVisual Effects
Ben Kiviat
SoundSound
Richard Fleming Steve Giammaria Iryna Kucherenko Nico Ruderman John Slocum Hilary Stewart
Studio
Tangerine Entertainment
Country
USA
Language
English
Alternative Titles
הצחוק האחרון, 幽默的界限, 라스트 래프
Genre
Documentary
Releases by Date
- Date
- Country
Premiere
18 Apr 2016
- USATribeca FilmFestival
Releases by Country
- Date
- Country
USA
18 Apr 2016
- PremiereTribeca FilmFestival
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Review by Will Steele ★★★
We can never truly vanquish the demons in our collective memory of such unimaginable trauma, but there’s some strength and solace in finding light even in the darkest corners of our culture.
It’s an individual choice - to laugh or to cry - but the key is that we can make the choice and that artistic expression should never be limited.
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Review by audy🐏 ★★★
"You know I speak about the Holocaust all the time, but I enjoy life. I'm so happy that I have 3 great-grandchildren. Could Hitler imagine that I will survive and I have 3 great-grandchildren? I mean, that's my revenge.
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Review by loureviews ★★★★
"Tragedy plus time equals comedy. And I thought, why wait?"
An excellent and thought-provoking documentary about whether any subject, specifically the Holocaust, is taboo when it comes to humour.
This came to mind very recently when the Talking Pictures TV channel chose to censor a print of Arthur Askey's film I Thank You because Hitler was shown reading the Jewish Chronicle. Is this funny, or is it offensive?
Survivors of concentration camps (including Terezin, of which we see clips of the infamous film and concert meant to show how happy the Jews were in captivity - before most of them were shipped to their deaths) talk alongside film-makers - notably Mel Brooks, still sharp and perceptive in his nineties -…
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Review by Craig "Jack-o'-lantern" Clark ★★★★½
"You can't tell a crappy joke about the biggest tragedy in the world. You can't do it." --comedian Judy Gold
Consider that this documentary, about the touchy subject of humor and the Holocaust, opens with "Hitler on Ice" from History of the World: Part I. That it includes clips from The Producers, To Be or Not to Be, The Great Dictator, and Life Is Beautiful. That the latter provokes sharply different responses from some of the interviewees. That the one who praises it to the skies is the most critical of things like Seinfeld's "Soup Nazi." That's quite telling.
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Review by Noah Lasher ★★★★
This month is Jewish American Heritage Month, and unfortunately the Holocaust is a significant part of our heritage and history. But we shouldn’t let that define us as a culture, as a people. We shouldn’t let it take away our freedom to be ourselves, and a large part of that is our humor.
Comedy has always been a way of reclamation for those who’ve gone through tragedy so surely it should apply to what is considered the greatest tragedy in human history. And when it does we have geniuses of comedy making hilarious material that comes from a place of love and respect but also serves as a reminder of what happened because sometimes that’s the only way.
There’s no…
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Review by Ken Rudolph ★★★½
Is it still too dangerous to make jokes about the Holocaust? How about 9/11? This documentary gathered several amazing comedians (among them Carl Reiner, Mel Brooks, Sarah Silverman, Gilbert Gottfried and more than a dozen others) to try to answer these questions with examples. SPOILER: maybe. It's not a good sign that the only time I actually laughed out loud was at a joke Gottfried told in the end credits. Still, just gathering all those funny people together to talk serious stuff was quite entertaining.
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Review by KYK
"Life Is Beautiful is the worst movie ever made" –Mel Brooks.
I highlighted this film in this week's issue of the Village Voice.
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Review by alexeleanor ★★★½
i need to stop watching movies in gelman
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Review by Francesco Quario ★★★★
As some of you might have gathered, last week I was doing a bit of research on Holocaust/Nazi comedies — this was for a podcast episode whose recording has been postponed, so I'll continue it next month.
I'm glad that, during this period, I was able to remember this documentary that I saw at the London Film Festival in 2016. At the time, I was drawn by the topic but, as I had just moved away from a non-English-speaking country, didn't recognise most of its comedian interviewees outside of Mel Brooks.
Asking a fundamental question about the ethics of joking about the Holocaust, you can't really fault the project for the moments when its interviewees go down "cancel culture"-adjacent rants,…
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Review by Wade Garrett ★★★½ 1
The Last Laugh keeps cutting to a Holocaust survivor… a woman who says she deals with the trauma through humor. We see her get in a mini-tiff with a fellow survivor, who can’t understand why anyone would approach the intense tragedy of their experience with laughter. Throughout the movie, it continually cuts to the good-natured woman as her daughter shows her Holocaust jokes on YouTube. More often than not, her pro-humor stance is challenged when she replies with "That's not funny."
I don't think this explicitly digs deep enough into how subjectivity affects our relationship with humor. John Cleese once said (I believe in the special features for Ricky Gervais' "The Office" I have on dvd) that the only way… -
Review by Sam ★★★½
interesting! enjoyed it quite a bit, though im personally starting to care less and less for the "meandering" documentary. just a personal thing
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Review by Arytaco ★★★½
An Anomalous Alloy: Humor and the Holocaust
Holocaust humor is composed of several distinct subcategories, including farce involving Nazis, concentration camps, gallows humor (a brand of black comedy specific to death), and German humor. The Last Laugh, a 2016 documentary directed by Ferne Pearlstein, seeks to address the concerns of whether Holocaust humor is funny, and where the line of acceptability should be drawn. The documentary interviews numerous comedians and comedy personalities, the majority of whom are Jewish, and also discusses the impact of certain memorable or controversial pieces of Holocaust humor. To be clear, this documentary is not seeking a single, definitive answer to whether humor can be made of a tragedy of this scale, but is merely collecting…