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I was thinking about what director Todd Phillips said about not being able to make good comedies anymore in the current easily offended culture, so he made Joker instead. John Favreau, another director previously known for comedies, has also moved to superhero/action films. It got me to thinking, when was the last time you saw a really great comedy movie? The Hangover (also directed by Todd Phillips) may have been the last. It wasn't the best comedy I've ever seen, but it was the last one that really made me laugh and was memorable. Tropic Thunder was funnier, but that came out in 2008, The Hangover came out in 2009. Were there any great comedies since then? Was the 2010s the unfunniest decade? I think the funniest movies I've seen since then were superhero films like Guardians of the Galaxy, and the Ant Man movies. The Avengers films also had a lot of humor in them, but I wouldn't exactly say that they were "comedies". They were superhero films. Even the Ghostbusters reboot, which wasn't all that funny, is more of a team of heroes film than it is a comedy. The funniest stuff, sadly, was on youtube. IE the antics of Rich Evans from RLM and The Angry Video Nerd. But those are just regular nerds like you and me doing reviews with stupid little skits interspersed throughout. Still, some of the best standup specials came out in the 2010s. Dave Chappelle, Bill Burr, and Louis CK (before his penis reveal) released some of the best stand up specials in the 2010s. But there were no great or particularly memorable comedy films in the 2010s. Am I leaving anything out? Edit: After posting, I just realized there was a 2010s movie that made me laugh uncontrollably hard ... though probably not intentionally. And that film was 2019's Cats. Gianthogweed fucked around with this message at 17:22 on Jan 19, 2020 |
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Jan 18, 2020 19:57
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There's plenty of edgy comedy on television, I doubt the lack of comedy-focused movies is a result of a society that's suddenly become more easy to offend. More likely it's because movies have been consolidating genres in general, everything has comedic, action and dramatic elements now. English language comedy-centric movies are probably a harder sell in other markets like China, too. Popstar: Never Stop Never Stopping was really good! And of course a total box office failure. SCheeseman fucked around with this message at 12:23 on Jan 19, 2020 |
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Jan 19, 2020 12:20
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I mean the main takeaway here is Philips sucks... But I do agree with the above post. I found The Farewell, Knives Out, Happy Death Day, Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, The Favourite, Sorry to Bother You to be hilarious, but you wouldn't categorize them solely as comedy.
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Jan 19, 2020 16:41
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Kinda feels like comedy movies of the last 20 years started sucking so much that they gave up. Comedy as a genre of long-form media seems to be obsolete in the wake of the internet. Even cartoons that are supposed to make kids laugh all now just have people sneaking in long-form plot and storytelling because they desperately just want to make anime.
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Jan 19, 2020 16:54
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SCheeseman posted:There's plenty of edgy comedy on television Is there? I admit I don't watch much tv anymore, but I've noticed a lack of good sitcoms. Granted, sitcoms were never "edgy" but they used to be the staple of prime time tv. I stopped watching sitcoms around the time Frasier ended, but my parents kept watching them. But even they have stopped watching new sitcoms and pretty much only watch reruns nowadays. It could just be because they're old, but my dad says the new sitcoms just aren't very good. Gianthogweed fucked around with this message at 01:06 on Jan 21, 2020 |
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Jan 19, 2020 17:21
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Sitcoms were never good, there's plenty of comedy on TV beyond that one format.
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Jan 19, 2020 18:03
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It’s not super hero movies but globalization. For all the articles about Cats and Doolittle losing money they really didn’t, the studio had the movie paid for before shooting started thanks to distribution rights and product placement. Hollywood won’t blink at making a movie for less than $20M or more than $150M because they know they won’t lose money on it. Comedies fall between these thresholds and are a much larger gamble for studios. They don’t sell as well overseas since so much of comedy is based on culture.
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Jan 19, 2020 18:45
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I blame Disney.
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Jan 20, 2020 00:28
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Gianthogweed posted:Is there? I admit I don't watch much tv anymore, but I've noticed a lack of good sitcoms. Granted, sitcoms were never "edgy" but they used to be the staple of prime time tv. I stopped watching sitcoms around the time Frasier ended, but my parents kept watching them. But even they have stopped watching new sitcoms and pretty much only watch reruns nowadays. It could just be because they're old, but my dad the new sitcoms just aren't very good. Why are you looking for edgy anything on broadcast TV? You're the Worst and It's Always Sunny are examples of comedies that are extremely comfortable pushing boundaries but they arent mean spirited and they arent punching down so nobody cares. Phillip's is just a dumb rear end in a top hat like so many dumb assholes who think that being offensive is the same thing as doing comedy.
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Jan 20, 2020 00:36
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No matter how you look at it Jason Bateman should probably take a break for a while.
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Jan 20, 2020 01:01
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Booksmart and Good Boys are the only two straigh-up comedies I remember seeing in recent times. Although there were probably some lovely ones released too. But yeah these are the exceptions to the rule, it seems. We've always had action-comedies like Army of Darkness or various Arnie flicks but spoof movies got murdered and it's easier to translate Thor doing an oopsie with his hammer so that's what we get.
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Jan 20, 2020 01:39
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I mean, if you’re looking for lovely shock humor releases, Loqueesha just came out last year...
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Jan 20, 2020 01:47
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The world finally caught on to the fact that Judd Apatow was making the same movie over and over again with different names and then got confused about whether they were supposed to laugh at the horror movies made by Dave Chappelles replacement so they collectively gave up and went back to watching Friends reruns on netflix.
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Jan 20, 2020 04:25
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Girl’s Trip, Game Night, and Rough Night were all solid comedies that are on par with the ensemble raunchy screwball comedies from past years.
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Jan 20, 2020 04:43
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SCheeseman posted:English language comedy-centric movies are probably a harder sell in other markets like China, too. Yeah, this is most certainly the real reason. Comedies are difficult to localize and sell to foreign markets.
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Jan 20, 2020 05:36
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YOLOsubmarine posted:Phillip's is just a dumb rear end in a top hat like so many dumb assholes who think that being offensive is the same thing as doing comedy. i feel like this is kind of a weird take in light of what Joker ended up actually being i don't think the dude wrote a polemic about how badly the mentally ill and poor get hosed over by our billionaire overlords by accident, and if you actually go back and read more than the headline of what he said, his gripe was more that everyone takes depiction as endorsement and you can't really do a wide-audience comedy that's basically pointing and laughing at garbage people anymore (because people will assume you're siding with the garbage). and it's kind of funny you mention Always Sunny, because people who don't get Always Sunny bitch about it all the time for this exact reason, and generally have to have it explained in depth to them that the universe fuckin' hates the Gang and you're not supposed to like them. e: granted, it's also not a surprise that Phillips' statement got portrayed the way it did, as some kind of bizarre "anti-SJW" rant (when realistically he's more angry at people who can't read movies for poo poo), because i don't know if you noticed, but the media spent months and months trying as hard as possible to scare people away from Joker (probably because it's a movie explicitly and directly made to rile the poor up into violent revolution against their masters) WeedlordGoku69 fucked around with this message at 05:48 on Jan 20, 2020 |
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Jan 20, 2020 05:46
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..edit I am not in the right thread.
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Jan 20, 2020 06:16
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LORD OF BOOTY posted:i feel like this is kind of a weird take in light of what Joker ended up actually being Here's the quote: quote:Go try to be funny nowadays with this woke culture,” he says. “There were articles written about why comedies don’t work anymore—I’ll tell you why, because all the loving funny guys are like, ‘gently caress this poo poo, because I don’t want to offend you.’ It’s hard to argue with 30 million people on Twitter. You just can’t do it, right? So you just go, ‘I’m out.’ I’m out, and you know what? With all my comedies—I think that what comedies in general all have in common—is they’re irreverent. So I go, ‘How do I do something irreverent, but gently caress comedy? Oh I know, let’s take the comic book movie universe and turn it on its head with this.’ And so that’s really where that came from.” If you're bitching about "woke culture" making it impossible to be funny then you're a lovely comedian and a coward. There are definitely people who find IASIP offensive but that's true of pretty much every piece of media produced ever. And sometimes it is offensive, but the folks who write the show have also tried to be pretty conscientious and don't whine about social justice warriors ruining comedy when someone gets mad about a joke they made. They're also pretty progressive in their public statements so they get a little more leeway. And the show itself has changed over time. Like, Phillip's wants to push boundaries and feel free to be offensive, but he doesn't want anyone to actually be offended because that would stifle his creativity. That's a loving cop out and is the same tired bullshit old out of touch comedians have been saying for decades. Marc Maron's take on it was perfect: quote:“There’s plenty of people being funny right now. Not only being funny but being really loving funny. There are still lines to be rode. If you like to ride a line, you can still ride a line. If you want to take chances, you can still take chances. Really, the only thing that’s off the table, culturally, at this juncture –and not even entirely– is shamelessly punching down for the sheer joy of hurting people. For the sheer excitement and laughter that some people get from causing people pain, from making people uncomfortable, from making people feel excluded. Y’know, that excitement.”
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Jan 20, 2020 06:22
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Simplex posted:Yeah, this is most certainly the real reason. Comedies are difficult to localize and sell to foreign markets. Mr Bean used to be good at this for minimal dialogue and physical comedy, but it turns out that's really hard to do and most easily replaced by YouTube videos.
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Jan 20, 2020 07:47
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Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story is my favorite comedy of this century, and I can't believe it came out in 2007. Popstar: Never Stop Never Stopping was also hilarious. I think I like both so much because not only are they funny, but they're both about music, and the songs are actually good songs that stand on their own, not just stupid, silly non-sequiturs or Weird Al-style parody songs. They used real songwriters and producers to capture the sounds and styles they were supposed to. From the last decade, I probably laughed the most at Popstar, The Nice Guys (a great neo-noir AND a hilarious buddy comedy), Booksmart, Game Night, 21 and 22 Jump Street (they're much funnier and smarter than most people would think), and Dolemite Is My Name. And even though it's not a comedy, I think the funniest scene in any movie, that made me laugh the hardest and longest in a long time, was the Quaaludes sequence in The Wolf of Wall Street. I agree that the best comedies are on television (including streaming services) these days, and have been for the last decade or more. Big Bad Voodoo Lou fucked around with this message at 07:58 on Jan 20, 2020 |
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Jan 20, 2020 07:55
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I think that with all the content that's available now, people are just more selective about what they'll go to the movies for. I'm all for the big screen experience, but don't have much problem with mediocre comedies that are shot like TV in the first place being relegated to streaming services. I'm thinking about about stuff like The Neighbors, The Heat, The House, Holmes and Watson, etc. Some of those are okay, some are terrible, but the unifying theme is that you can watch them on your TV or your iPad and you're basically not losing anything in translation because none of them are shot with substantially more thought than an episode of Modern Family.
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Jan 20, 2020 19:39
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they make plenty of comedies still you just don't go to see them
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Jan 20, 2020 20:10
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General Dog posted:I think that with all the content that's available now, people are just more selective about what they'll go to the movies for. I'm all for the big screen experience, but don't have much problem with mediocre comedies that are shot like TV in the first place being relegated to streaming services. I'm thinking about about stuff like The Neighbors, The Heat, The House, Holmes and Watson, etc. Some of those are okay, some are terrible, but the unifying theme is that you can watch them on your TV or your iPad and you're basically not losing anything in translation because none of them are shot with substantially more thought than an episode of Modern Family. The House was surprisingly hilarious, but yeah, I waited to see it when it was on cable. I just realized Last Friday is probably never going to happen because John Witherspoon’s gone. 
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Jan 20, 2020 20:19
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Death of Stalin was an excellent black comedy and it came out in 2017 op. Jojo Rabbit was also a good comedy though it got super dark eventually and I could see why someone wouldn't count it as a comedy after that, even though it still makes jokes.. so I suppose good comedies still exist but only as pretty dark historical comedies about dictatorships
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Jan 20, 2020 20:30
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Death of Stalin is the last comedy I remember making a point of seeing in the theater.
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Jan 20, 2020 20:56
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YOLOsubmarine posted:Why are you looking for edgy anything on broadcast TV? I'm not. I was just responding to SCheesman who said there were plenty of "edgy" shows on tv. quote:You're the Worst and It's Always Sunny are examples of comedies that are extremely comfortable pushing boundaries but they arent mean spirited and they arent punching down so nobody cares. All comedy is potentially offensive to someone. Even self deprecating comedy because if you're making fun of your own shortcomings chances are someone else has those same shortcomings and will be offended. This is why a lot of fat people get offended when fat comics make fun of their own fatness. But I think that a lot of people have forgotten that comedy is made primarily with the intention of making people laugh and cheering them up, not with the intention of "punching down" and making people feel bad. Sure there are few assholes who make fun of people solely for the purpose of bullying but, more often than not, that's not the intention despite efforts to paint bad intentions onto people. Gianthogweed fucked around with this message at 01:23 on Jan 21, 2020 |
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Jan 21, 2020 01:18
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Tod Phillips posted:Go try to be funny nowadays with this woke culture,” he says. “There were articles written about why comedies don’t work anymore—I’ll tell you why, because all the loving funny guys are like, ‘gently caress this poo poo, because I don’t want to offend you.’ It’s hard to argue with 30 million people on Twitter. You just can’t do it, right? So you just go, ‘I’m out.’ I’m out, and you know what? With all my comedies—I think that what comedies in general all have in common—is they’re irreverent. So I go, ‘How do I do something irreverent, but gently caress comedy? Oh I know, let’s take the comic book movie universe and turn it on its head with this.’ And so that’s really where that came from.” It's interesting that he mentions twitter as being the cause for the lack of comedy movies this past decade. I believe twitter took off in 2009. At least that's when I first joined. And 2009 is the year "The Hangover" came out.
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Mar 3, 2020 18:25
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Comedy movies don't work anymore because there's a plethora of comedy that is often funnier than almost anything that's ever been shown on a big cinema screen available for free on the internet. The only reason to go a cinema these days is spectacle and it's not like the comedy genre has much of a reputation for impressive visuals. Tod Phillips seems like kind of an idiot.
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Mar 3, 2020 19:02
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General Dog posted:I think that with all the content that's available now, people are just more selective about what they'll go to the movies for. I'm all for the big screen experience, but don't have much problem with mediocre comedies that are shot like TV in the first place being relegated to streaming services. I'm thinking about about stuff like The Neighbors, The Heat, The House, Holmes and Watson, etc. Some of those are okay, some are terrible, but the unifying theme is that you can watch them on your TV or your iPad and you're basically not losing anything in translation because none of them are shot with substantially more thought than an episode of Modern Family. honestly i feel like this post gets closest to what actually happened here, which is that the combination of streaming and the huge increase in the number of comedies on television have made people realize that they really don't want to go see a comedy on the big screen for the most part. There are still some comedies that are successful in theaters but the fact that when people try to capitalize on those and make sequels or more movies with the same people they aren't successful in the same way as superhero movies are. You get a Bridesmaids or a Girls Night or a Neighbors but inevitable a sequel will not live up to the surprise success (see: Neighbors 2, Jumanji 2) or a sequel doesn't get made and any future movies with the star of those movies still struggles to recapture that magic (see: Melissa McCarthy, Tiffany Haddish, both of whom haven't been in a big blockbuster hit since their breakout films, and who have both moved on to more producing roles and starring roles on TV that are probably more fulfilling than a movie where you're part of an ensemble). Also streaming doesn't require you to edit your work as much since you can just put it out as episodic content, which is why Judd Apatow and the people inspired by him tend to gravitate that way, because they've almost never made a movie that couldn't benefit from about 20 minutes of cutting.
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Mar 3, 2020 21:13
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Iannucci is doing The Personal History of David Copperfield, but agree with a lot of people on the why would you see a comedy in theaters these days.
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Mar 4, 2020 18:50
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I think people are still willing to see comedies in theaters - they're just not collectively willing to drop a billion dollars doing so. Studios aren't interested in mid-tier movies that make decent anymore, and since it was always extremely unlikely for an out-and-out comedy to break the bank, Hollywood has given up on them like it has most other genres.
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Mar 5, 2020 20:33
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Wake me up when FailArmy has a 3 hour movie in an extended universe
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Mar 5, 2020 21:11
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DOPE FIEND KILLA G posted:they make plenty of comedies still you just don't go to see them But it may not hold up long-term, because it was mostly shot/reverse shot - not a lot of visual gags. I think the stuff that will hold up longer will be the ones that were mentioned like Game Night, 21-22 Jump Street, Booksmart, Death of Stalin, and all the Taika Waititi films.
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Mar 6, 2020 16:15
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Black Lighter posted:I think people are still willing to see comedies in theaters - they're just not collectively willing to drop a billion dollars doing so. Studios aren't interested in mid-tier movies that make decent anymore, and since it was always extremely unlikely for an out-and-out comedy to break the bank, Hollywood has given up on them like it has most other genres. Somebody needs to make a comedy that's only funny on a big IMAX screen in 3D so people will rush out and pay $40 a pop.
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May 9, 2020 14:20
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Why is every Netflix special terrible
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May 18, 2020 20:04
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Palm Springs is a 2020 comedy and I like it.
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Sep 8, 2020 19:42
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Give Nick Mullen 30 million and all the coke he wants and you'll maybe get a funny movie again.
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Sep 9, 2020 06:13
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YOLOsubmarine posted:Here's the quote: The guy involved in making Old School, Borat, The Hangover (1) is not funny?
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Sep 9, 2020 18:40
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Spy (2015) was enough of a hoot that I feel comfortable calling it a pure comedy, not a dark comedy or a comedy drama or anything like that. Jason Statham was great. I do think that TV is just a great match for comedy because the time constraint forces the comedians to cut, cut and cut. Conversely, many movie comedies are so terrible because writers have to stretch out their material.
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Sep 9, 2020 19:04
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Vegetable posted:Spy (2015) was enough of a hoot that I feel comfortable calling it a pure comedy, not a dark comedy or a comedy drama or anything like that. Jason Statham was great. And most movie adaptations of comedy based TV shows (especially cartoons) tend to be awful specifically because they have to stretch out the plot and raise the stakes.
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Sep 9, 2020 19:10
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