MovieChat Forums > General Discussion > What happened to comedy films?

What happened to comedy films?

posted 3 years ago by M1sterDoct0r (4423)
58 replies | jump to latest

I was cleaning recently & I found my "Kung Pow: Enter the Fist" DVD. Haven't seen it in almost 2 decades. Gave it a watch & It genuinely made me laugh out loud.

And then it occurred to me, I hadn't watched a film that has genuinely made me laugh out loud in a while. The Disney Marvel films are mostly comedies but they're only good for a chuckle or 2 most of the time.

I think the last time was 2016. With Deadpool & The Nice Guys. So what happened? Are they just not as profitable anymore or are they just going through a transitional phase? Cause you barely see big studios banking on comedies anymore. Like has the market for it dwindled over the years? Kinda like Horror did but is having a renaissance in the past decade.

Or is it as some people claim, as in, "it's too PC out there" or "Cancel culture has ruined comedy" and all that. The reason why I don't buy that argument is cause there are a lot of 'offensive' & mature comedic tv shows out there. And they're very popular & people love 'em

[–] chilidoggg (14285) 3 years ago

The last comedy I saw that was really funny IMO was Stuber, in 2019, and before that, maybe Bad Moms in 2016.

[–] M1sterDoct0r (4423) 3 years ago

I honestly didn't care for Stuber. But to each their own

[–] chilidoggg (14285) 3 years ago

It's been lean pickings for a long time that's for sure.

[–] chilidoggg (14285) 3 years ago

I also liked Snatched and Kingsman 2 both in 2017.

I liked A Madea Family Funeral (2019)

[–] chilidoggg (14285) 3 years ago

Has anyone seen Hababam Sinifi (1975)?

[Feature Film, Rating Count at least 25,000, Comedy (Sorted by IMDb Rating Descending)]

How about #11. Chhichhore (2019)?

[–] tcrum (31533) 3 years ago

I think it has more to do with people being afraid to look stupid. Everything has to be so serious these days, or its trash. There has to be room for stupid, silly movies like Deuce Bigalow, Blades of Glory, Basketball, etc.

[–] DoctorThirteen (13995) 3 years ago

Blades of Glory 👍 A true laugh out loud film!

[–] [deleted] 3 years ago

Hollywood is at peak nihilism. That's why we don't have comedies anymore. If you notice, there are also tons of other lighthearted genres that are noticeably absent. We don't have buddy picture films, road trip films, cute rom-coms, holiday movies, not even a genuine kid's film. Everything coming out now is antihuman, angry, bitter and cynical. Even superhero genres are loaded with nihilism.

Also, there's no market for genuine comedy because millennials and GenZs are idiots who learned "comedy" by way of memes and anticomedy. When you read comments on YouTube videos, you can tell by the timestamp just how moronic they are. Fifteen million "he attac" comments. OMFG!!! He attac!!! Wowowow, comedy gold! 🙄

The best comedy of the idiocy that passes for "comedy" is the whole lasagna cat meme that culminates in a one hour video where a guy dressed like a professor gives a dissertation about one panel from a Garfield strip from 1978. There's nothing clever about it in an Andy Kauffman vein. It's just anticomedy.

[–] R_Kane (15828) 3 years ago

The most recent funny film I enjoyed was Heartbreakers, and, if Jennifer Love Hewitt’s body had not been in that, it may not have resonated with me as much. The next most recent is My Cousin Vinny. Okay, I did get some actual laughs out of Guardians of the Galaxy and Deadpool (the first ones only), but they’re not COMEDY films. They have some humor in them. If we’re talking TV, the HBO series SMILF and VEEP. Let’s stick to movies. 2 1/2 years ago, I spent a sybaritic month in hospital. Watching hospital TV in my room, I came across a witless, self-congratulatory abomination that turned out to be The Hangover, which I know many people here like. I don’t.

Let’s back up. Comedy, in classical terms, shows humankind at its worst. Tragedy shows humankind at our most magnificent. Tragedy puts the protagonist in a situation that is literally impossible, thereby taking her/his full measure. S/he fails, but we are inspired by the heights to
which s/he rose NEARLY to prevail. Comedy puts some asshat in a situation any idiot could resolve, then we laugh by how badly s/he fucks it up, plucking defeat from the jaws of victory.

Modern film “comedy” just shows bad folks being assholes, then waits for you to laugh, without having created a context.

This approach dates back at least to Caddyshack and Animal House, the dawn of Fratboy Humor. Ever known a truly funny fratboy? Me neither.

Fratboy Humor is smug and entitled. It started at The Harvard Lampoon, then segued into Saturday Night Dead Live,
which was populated by Lampoon alumni/alumnae. Fueled by socioeconomic privilege and a whole lotta toot, it took root with Yuppies too flaccid to socialize beyond their TV sets and dope.

And that led to the second paragraph in minababe’s post directly above. People have been conditioned to believe that things that lack basic WIT and, so have no solid comic CENTER are funny. And that’s just sad.

[–] chilidoggg (14285) 3 years ago

"Yuppies too flaccid to socialize beyond their TV sets and dope"

That's a great line. Wish I wrote it. I don't even care if it's accurate or not.

[–] R_Kane (15828) 3 years ago

Thank you. I enjoy making people laugh, which is why I take humor so seriously.

[–] [deleted] 3 years ago

Modern film “comedy” just shows bad folks being assholes, then waits for you to laugh, without having created a context. This approach dates back at least to Caddyshack and Animal House, the dawn of Fratboy Humor.

The quintessential comedy that kickstarted what you call modern comedy (people being assholes without context) was MASH. That was the movie that had the two "heroes" being assholes for the sake of it, and it had antecedents in the movie, Mr. Roberts, where we were supposed to laugh at grown men on leave acting like animals (sexually assaulting women, setting things on fire, etc.) "just because."

I find it strange that you picked Caddyshack and Animal House as emblematic of what you're talking about. Both movies used what you called "frat boy humor" to bring back the type of anarchist comedy of The Marx Brothers and Three Stooges, whose comedy revolved around a group of boors wreaking havoc in so-called "high society". There's no question of this; in Caddyshack, there are scenes in which Ted Knight has the exact same reaction as Margaret Dumont, and it was two SNL players who went on to do Trading Places, which was an update on a favorite Three Stooges storyline (of two rich old men placing a bet with each other over whether they could turn classless boors into elites, only for those boors to create havoc).

So, there was context in those two movies, to make fun of upper class elites, particularly WASPs. Colleges were targeted in Animal House because Ivy League college were WASP institutions. Country clubs were targeted because these were WASP-owned venues that discriminated against "inferiors", particularly blacks and Jews.

But that's neither here nor there. Your insistence that this has to do with frat boy humor being stripped of context is missing the big picture. Showing people being jerks without context is nihilism, which is what I said was a root cause of the OP's complaint.

[–] MovieManCin2 (26342) 3 years ago

The Left and the Woke Crowd have politicized everything, and made it almost impossible to laugh at anyone or anything.
The fucking bastards! But the pendulum will eventually swing back towards sanity.

😒

[–] DoctorThirteen (13995) 3 years ago

I hope it does.

[–] MovieManCin2 (26342) 3 years ago

It will. Trust me.

😎

[–] [deleted] 3 years ago

Must be painful to be this stupid. I can tell you're the type of moron that types this crap regardless of what the topic is, just a stone cold moron ranting every two seconds that everything has to do with the left and woke, like a dumb robot whose voice is now on loop.

[–] MovieManCin2 (26342) 3 years ago

You should know, since you're incredibly stupid, and obviously a Leftard moron. Are you always this stupid,
or is this a special occasion?

😎

[–] Knish (1721) 3 years ago

Crash pad made me laugh a lot, I was surprised by it, never heard of it.

[–] Kazak (2187) 3 years ago

They left when the humor vanished...

[–] horrorfan000 (2308) 3 years ago

The problem is the industry gives easily offended pc nuts and cancel culture too much power to decide what is and isn't appropriate for the masses.Kind of hard to get good comedy from people who think classic comedies like Airplane, Blazing saddles and shows like Married with children are offensive.

[–] M1sterDoct0r (4423) 3 years ago

Cancel culture as a whole is a cancer. Those are definitely in the minority & if we all ignored them, they'd have no power

But the media & social media gives them way too much power & attention