Tough, right? I would say that those are three great examples of perfect comedies. They may be “genre” films to some, but they’re comedies. I think comedy is one of those things where you can “add this to that” to do something great, or say something great. Kind of like how Babadook, It Follows, and Get Out are all ostensibly horror films, but they’re really using horror to say something else. Using a genre like horror allows them to enclose their themes and messages in a wrapper that lets them get away with some stuff they otherwise wouldn’t be able to in a straight up drama or thriller.
In any case, we can at least agree that Ghostbusters and Clue are two of the best films ever made, full stop.
Yeah. And then where does stuff like “for kids but clearly also for adults” stuff fall? Shrek has a lot of material for adults to laugh at between the gross-out and visual gag humor for kids, and while yeah, there’s also a love story and a fantasy quest story in there, it’s basically just a comedy, right? Or is it stuck categorized as a “kids” movie entire? At what point does a movie supersede that?
(This isn’t a criticism of your breakdown, @Tin_Wisdom. I think you do a fine job acknowledging the weird edge cases and tough decisions made when categorizing)
Or, hey, abandon movies for a sec. Is Rick and Morty principally a comedy, a scifi, or is it secretly a family drama?
edit: and goddamn straight. I showed Clue to a roomful of people who’d never seen it before, and then later to a couple of friends who also hadn’t, and both times, people were rolling in their seats. It’s so damned good.
Actually, that’s a really good point (which I’m wholly going to ignore except for the word “TV” from your post). The transformation of popular prime time (and prestige) television programming into long-form storytelling (as opposed to episodic, isolated storytelling) is surely impactful to films. Used to be that films and television were very, very different methods for delivering media to people. That difference has slightly eroded. But then you see this whole connected universe thing showing up in movies, taking cues from TV, so it’s all going sideways and weird.
In short: I have no idea wtf is happening anywhere at any time, but I’m pretty sure I don’t like it.
It’s kind of a hopeless exercise. Is Ghostbusters a comedy, sci-fi, fantasy, horror, romance, rom-com, or action/adventure? I could make a reasonable case for any of the above (I put it in “comedy” for my matrix).
I do think that “genres” that also specify setting are kind of useless: Sci-fi, Fantasy, Period, Biblical, Samurai, Sword-and-Sandals, Post-Apocalyptic, etc. It’s just silly that Solaris and Robocop are lumped into the same category because they’re both theoretically set in the future.
And it’s that category that sells worldwide. Comedy is subjective, history is of limited interest to even its own people, what constitutes good drama is not universal, and musicals died years ago.
Though I’d also say the state of modern comedy is far inferior to that of years gone by. Give me a Caddyshack, a Blues Brothers, a Ferris Beuler, or an Airplane any day over any comedy made in the last 20 years. And I’m not one of you old codgers! Every one of those, Save Ferris, came out before I was born.
But
This is the fundamental difference. Do you need those feature length character dramas when you have The Wire, or Sopranos on TV? Why go through the trouble of going to the theater for some historical drama when you can come home and binge The Crown, or Downton Abbey, or any number of BBC productions you can watch on Netflix these days.
With the quality of both streamed and live television offerings movies needed to adapt, theaters too. Nobody is gonna put up with noisy theaters with sticky floors and bad popcorn for $12+ a seat plus the cost of babysitting. Not when I can crack open a bottle of wine and some good snacks and watch something at home after the kids are asleep. There needs to be a justification for going to the movie, something they do better than I can at home. And serious dramas, with all the myriad potential distractions, ain’t it.
Big, loud, spectacular are things that they can do better. I will still rather watch a Star Wars movie in theaters for the first time. A Hidden Figures, or Arrival type movie? I’d rather do that at home, or more accurately I can not and will not make the extra effort to see those in theater.
Yep, pretty much everything has moved to TV except 'splosions.
Theatrical moviegoing today is fundamentally a different thing now than it was in the '80s. Which is fine; moviegoing in the '80s was fundamentally different than it was in the 1940s, when people literally went twice a week on average.
The really remarkable thing is that theatrical movies are still around after 70 years of competition from TV, and are actually doing fine … so long as you like 'splosions.
What’s kind of funny is the way movie theaters have moved to become more like your home viewing experience - I went to a place a while back that had comfy recliner-like seats, and could order a pizza and a beer. What times we live in!
Exactly. As theaters realize that they’re in direct competition with living rooms, they strive to become more like your living room only with an entertainment system larger than you could ever fit into your home.
Cinemark bought the theater near me a couple of years ago. They spent the first year renovating the theaters one at a time until all of them had about half as many seats, but every seat was a electronic recliner with nearly twice as much space as the old hardback seats and plenty of cupholders and flat areas to place your food and drink. The second year they spent several months renovating the front lobby so that now ticketing is much easier and more efficient (both electronic and at the ticket desk), the space feels much more open and inviting, and the concessions have completely changed to offer real food in addition to the staples of popcorn and candy. It’s still pricey as hell, but if you want to, you can recreate dinner and a movie in front of your TV, if your TV was dozens of feet across.
I just saw Black Panther at that theater this past weekend. $7.25 for the matinee show (including online ticket convenience fee), so just under $15 for my wife and I. Sure, I could have waited for it to hit HBO around Christmas and watched it at home, but for $15 for the two of us, it was well worth seeing in a theater setting, and I never once felt uncomfortable despite the long running time thanks to the recliner-style seating and the nearest person being at least two large recliner-style seats away.
Ok, that’s a good pull. In fact for modern comedies Simon Pegg is the best. I’d also add in Hot Fuzz, not as brilliant but still a solid 4 stars for me. I concede these belong in any great comedy talks.
Carell is alright, but his movies very overrated IMO. Same for Will Farrel, I can tolerate them, but don’t particularly care for most.
This, and Big Lebowski, fit in the last 20 years. Somehow, in my mind, they were outside my arbitrary limit. Why my going for 20 years rather than the 2000’s seems to be a mistake ;)
Hey, that’s a Pixar movie. Animated kids movies don’t fit in your comedy category! No matter how great they are (which is usually a lot)
I actively hate all of these. Not as much as Step Brothers or Dumb and Dumberer, but that’s only because they didn’t cause me physical pain from stupidity like those two did. Otherwise I’d rather do almost literally anything else. Like I would literally rather clean toilets than watch Borat again.
I don’t even hate the movie nearly as much as all the annoying “the cake is a lie” level of memes the movie spawned. I had to sit through a Christmas dinner with my brother-in-law and another guy just kept on with the “I like!” crap. I was ready to strangle them.
I like Will but I think he shines more as a side character in a movie than the main star. That being said, a lot of the comedies mentioned aren’t as funny at first watch as they are as lingering enjoyment of the outlandishness of them over time. Cult comedy is very much a thing.
An example from those listed above: Zoolander. At first watch, “what the hell is this, it’s not that funny.” Now I belly laugh at so many of the scenes.
Good comedy to me is like a shoe, you break it in and wear it over time until it’s your favorite. It’s not a one time wear kind of thing.
Hell yes, if for non other reason than for encapsulating my life philosophy in this exchange:
Pvt. Joe Bowers: Why me? Every time Metsler says, “Lead, follow, or get out of the way,” I get out of the way.
Sgt. Keller: Yeah, when he says that, you’re not supposed to choose “get out of the way.” It’s supposed to embarrass you into leading - or at least following.
Pvt. Joe Bowers: That doesn’t embarrass me.
