In the 20’s comedy meant one thing, the slapstick stylings of Buster Keaton and Charlie Chaplin complicated by subtle social commentary. As the ideas and messages expanded in film so did the genre. Comedy became less subtle in its ideas, no longer just an escape from reality where the impossible is possible but rather an examination of real-life situations and people. Between the 70s and 90s, comedy saw it’s golden age. Why? The answer to that is a simple one– real comedians.
People who knew the trade and had mastered it long before they got into film became actors and brought their knowledge of the trade to the big screen. Chevy Chase, Rodney Dangerfield, Robin Williams, Jim Carrey to name a few. These guys knew how to deliver wholesome comedy that did not rely on societal taboos and cheap gags to get a laugh.
But then the new millennium began and quickly became populated by infantile spoof comedies like Scary Movie that relied on societal taboo’s (underage drinking, teen sex, drug use, etc…). This isn’t to say that there aren’t a few stand out’s —Super Bad, Knocked Up, Role Models— but for the most part this new generation of comedy can’t be enjoyed by everyone.
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In the 90s, guys like Carrey and Williams were in their prime. You could take the whole family to a comedy and everyone had a legitimate chance to laugh. Nowadays, most comedies are rated R and only a select group can enjoy them. Some would argue this allows comedies to have more freedom but in reality it actually limits them: if someone goes to a R-rated comedy they are expecting a lot of profanity and some nudity.
The worst part about this new brand of comedy is that it is spreading into other genres. How many times do you see the genre-mixing qualifiers romantic-comedy, action-comedy, and horror-comedy thrown around? We have entered a world where comedy has lost its identity as a genre. This year is no exception. Though these comedies in question do entertain, they are still part of this generation of comedies that has to rely on taboos to get the job done.
For example, The Hangover has received unpredicted amounts of success, on its way to to being the highest grossing R-rated comedy of all time. But it relies on the taboos of sex, drinking and drug use. In the last 2 years alone there have been nine films (Knocked Up, Superbad, Pineapple Express, Role Models, Zach and Miri, Harold & Kumar Escape from Guantanamo Bay, Forgetting Sarah Marshall, You Don’t Mess With the Zohan, Step Brothers) that all followed that same formula of adult-themed, politically incorrect comedy. I’m not going to say I didn’t like some of them but the point is that they are all following the same formula.
On the softer side of the spectrum, if a comedy is not rated R then it is a G-rated kids-themed money grabber like College Road Trip or Beverly Hills Chihuahua.
A select few films have tried to get back to that once-golden age of laughter. For example, Jim Carrey’s Yes Man relentlessly fought to get back to 90s-style comedy, but, in the end, was a near exact rehash of Carrey’s hit 1997 film Liar Liar.
Aside from the R-rated formula and the ambitiously nostalgic failures, we continue to see a lot of really poor spoof comedy. When someone makes a spoof comedy they walk a very fine line between silly and funny. It is clear when one watches the Scary Movie films, or more recently Dance Flick, that there is not any effort put into most of these films at all.
Now there are exceptions – those that know how to succeed in the spoof genre and have created films such as Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz. The reason these comedies work is because they embrace the genre they are spoofing and create an original story, and original movie, around it. Consider this: the first Scary Movie was not supposed to be the first in a franchise and instead of spoofing the idea of the horror film it spoofed specific horror films, such as Wes Craven’s Scream (which was essentially a spoof of other Wes Craven films but we won’t get into that).
Unfortunately, instead of grabbing just a few elements from Scream it took the entire Scream story and input cheesier dialogue and lewd jokes. There is no effort shown in the film at all. When you compare it other horror spoofs such as Shaun of the Dead, which took from Dawn of the Dead yet still managed to tell a singular story, Scary Movie feels amateur.
So is this the direction that comedy is going? Is it already too late to turn back? Are we left with nothing but teen sex, pot heads, underage drinking and spoofs? Perhaps not. But if something doesn’t change soon, then the quality of this great genre will continue to worsen and worsen.
Do you agree? Where do you see comedy headed?