As was once said in a TV show that I used to watch a lot: "Humor is so subjective."
You didn't find the movie funny; that's fair.
That said, I have a comment or two about some of your explanation.
same with the Wang jokes, maybe it was slightly funny the first time Twain tells Wang to use his prepositions, but this was rehashed over and over. Same with Wang's proverbs, it was the same joke over and over.
and I know it's a spoof, but a lot of these jokes about certain stereotypes, which may have been funny to 70s audiences, certainly have not aged well and are not funny today.
I've never noticed any particular stereotypes about blind butlers or deaf mute cooks.
When it comes to the rest of the characters, they weren't spoofing / doing jokes about stereotypes. They were spoofing a specific set of characters and almost all of their jokes were specifically about those characters, though maybe more about their movie incarnations than staying strictly true to the books. They weren't doing jokes about Asian / Chinese stereotypes, they were doing jokes about Charlie Chan movies (and back in the 1960s and 70s those were on local TV a lot in late show and weekend daytime slots; everybody back then could identify with Twain every time he yelled something like "'is the'! 'is the'!" at Wang), right down to the Anglo lead actor with an Asian actor playing the son; the proverb thing was definitely a Charlie Chan trait, not an all-Chinese-people-speak-in-proverbs stereotype. They were also spoofing Sam Spade (though they also did throw in a couple references to other similar Humphrey Bogart roles), Nick & Nora Charles (from the Thin Man series), Miss Marple, and Hercule Poirot.
reply
share