FEATURE:
A Funny Old Business
PHOTO CREDIT: Tima Miroshnichenko/Pexels
Why Is There Not a Resurgence in Phenomenal Comedy Films?
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AT the moment…
there are genres in cinema that are experiencing real peaks and golden periods. At the moment, I feel the Horror genre is producing some of the most innovative and acclaimed films. In the past few years, Sinners, Weapons, Backrooms and Obsession. The final two in that list were released very recently. Incredible directors taking Horror to new places. Whilst there are wonderful reasons to celebrate cinema and highlight the brilliance of genres like Horror and what is happening there, there are some real issues. Only a few major studios. Female directors not being recognised. Gender inequality and sexism. Pay gaps still in place. Since the pandemic, there has been so many glorious films released. What is noticeable is that comedy is struggling. On U.K. T.V., there are very few sitcoms in general. Although humour is subjective, I do not think there have been many great ones this decade. The same with films. We do heartwarming and charming well but, when it comes to comedies that are up there with the best ever made, there have been few challengers. America too. I have always loved American comedies more. Particularly when it comes to sitcoms. Most of my top ten would be American. Though there has been an absence of great sitcoms in general the past few years. Revived sitcoms like Malcom in the Middle and Scrubs, yet very few new examples of brilliant U.S. comedies. This country struggling to produce too many greats I love This Country and Derry Girls, though both of those ended a while ago. Not too many British comedy films that I feel are up there with the best of the U.S. I loved 2023’s Rye Lane and last year’s The Ballad of Wallis Island. I think they have their moments, but it might be the way we do comedy and what people look for. Differences between the U.S. and U.K. Maybe the U.S. are better at fast-paced and jam-packed comedies, whereas we tend to have a different style.
Again, comedy is subjective. Though objectively most of the greatest comedy films have been American-made. Last year provided a few interesting comedies. Is This Thing On?, Pizza Movie, and Adulthood among them. There were underwhelming remakes and sequels. Happy Gilmore, The Naked Gun and Anaconda. Even Spinal Tap II: The End Continues. Perhaps there is a lack of budget for comedies. If there is an absence of comedies and other genes are more prevalent and popular, it is harder for people pitching ideas. I am thinking back to the last time a comedy film was released that rivalled the best I have ever seen. What has come out this year? A new J-Lo film, Office Romance, raises a few smiles. Scary Movie is dreadful. Outcome is patchy. Ready or Not 2: Here I Come I would say is more Horror than Comedy. Ladies First is absolutely rancid. I am being a bit harsh on U.K. comedy I feel. It is just my particular taste is geared more towards American comedy and that style. Saturday Night Live UK is brilliant. A few great U.S. comedies and comedy-dramas that are not too far in the past. One that I feel should have stayed on T.V. longer is The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel. Starring Rachel Brosnahan as the titular lead, I would have loved one more series. It is a series that originally was set in the late-1950s and ended in around 1961, I think. It is a shame, as it could have taken us to 1963. Set in New York, we could have seen the J.F.K assassination and how that affected and impacted the series. Stretch to 1964 and The Beatles arriving in America. Though the series went out on a high. It has been a little quiet on the comedy front. All the very films of the past five or ten years have been in other genres. If you search ‘the best comedy films ever’ very few lists will include anything from this decade. That is worrying. Does it suggest a lack of amazing comedy writers and directors? I don’t think so. I do think that there is less faith in the Comedy genre. The butt of its own joke. Comedy is also really hard to write and appeal to a broad audience, as everyone has their own taste when it comes to comedy. Pitching to everyone is almost an impossible task.
It doesn’t help that there have been some tired and underwhelming remakes. A few Netflix comedies that are vastly unoriginal and lack any real spark and punch. You can say that changing sensibilities and boundaries of acceptability mean that films in the past that were highly revered would not be accepted now. Most comedy films going straight to streaming platforms and seen as background. Straight-up comedy films rarer; many are fusing with others genres. A few factors come into play. I do think that studios generally do not want to invest in the genre. Platforms like Disney+ and Netflix will commission comedy films, though what is often produced is pretty unremarkable. I want to bring in this article from The Times from last year. It does ask why pure comedises have almost disappeared from the screen. It highlights a few remakes that did make it onto the big screen. I think all of them are pretty average. And it is a shame when remakes and sequels are highlighted, rather than original ideas. Are straight-up comedies no longer a cinematic possibility? This year’s offerings do not suggest a rosy future:
“Box office analysts and culture watchers alike suggest that it’s been more than a decade since comedies effectively disappeared from cinema screens, or at least since comedy impresarios such as Judd Apatow could turn everything from The 40-Year-Old Virgin to Knocked Up to Bridesmaids into box office gold. “What we witnessed is a migration of audiences to the small screen to get their comedy,” says Paul Dergarabedian, senior media analyst for the data firm Comscore. “In order to spend their money, and take the time and effort to go out to the theatre, audiences wanted the larger-than-life experience of superhero movies, action movies and sci-fi movies.”
In short, thanks to Iron Man and the rise of the streamers, a grand cinematic tradition that included the Marx Brothers, Woody Allen, Barbra Streisand, Monty Python, Airplane!, Austin Powers and Wedding Crashers had effectively been replaced by a faceless Netflix algorithm that was regularly pumping out joyless “laugh fests” such as Mother of the Bride and Love & Gelato.
The few comedies that did remain in cinemas, according to the Naked Gun producer (and Family Guy creator) Seth MacFarlane, weren’t always recognisable as such. “We’ve been giving people broccoli and telling them it’s a candy bar for the last ten years, as a lot of things called comedies now are most definitely not comedies,” he said recently. “We’ve been offered comedies that are a little up their own asses, maybe a little inflated with a sense of their own importance.”
MacFarlane, at the time, declined to name the “offenders” in question, but any search for key movie comedies of the past decade will throw up titles such as the social satire Triangle of Sadness, the love letter to creativity The Banshees of Inisherin and the environmental sermon Don’t Look Up. All great movies, yes, but not exactly Neeson doing a diarrhoea gag.
And that’s another thing. This new wave of comedies is being described as “pure comedy”, the films focused only on giggles and laughter, and notable for their delicate dance through the culture wars. There is not a single scene in either The Naked Gun or Freakier Friday that could aggravate either side of the foam-flecked clickerati. This is something that could not be said of the previous comedy wave: plenty of Apatow movies, even the best ones, involved whiny guys sitting around telling sexist jokes.
“Without getting into politics and stuff, we’re all living in a culture, a society, where we’re scared to speak and scared if we don’t,” Neeson said recently, noting that movies such as The Naked Gun, like “gargoyles in cathedrals”, are here to remind us, “Come on, don’t take yourself too seriously. The film is a giggle and we need that.”
Neeson’s point is underscored by the Freakier Friday director Nisha Ganatra, who sees this big-screen comedy resurgence as a reflection of wider collective yearnings. “It’s my hope that people are craving a communal experience again and that laughing together with a group of people at a theatre is what makes people feel good,” she tells me. “Especially in this time of uncertainty, comedies can provide relief. Laughing out loud is an energising experience with your friends or with total strangers. Everyone ends up feeling better.”
The crucial question, however, is whether enough cinemagoing audiences will turn up for comedy in a time of uncertainty. The box office figures are in and The Naked Gun made $28.3 million on its opening weekend. It has not, according to Dergarabedian, “blown the doors off”, but it is a solid beginning that, combined with positive scores and exit polls, suggests word-of-mouth may sustain a healthy commercial run.
What it really means, Dergarabedian says, is that all attention now falls on Freakier Friday, which opens this weekend. If that’s a hit, then the new multiplex comedy wave continues apace. If not, expect to be watching Murphy’s Pink Panther on Netflix next year.
“If there’s a crisis of confidence that’s happening with movie comedy it’s simply because putting a comedy into a movie theatre is more expensive than going to streaming,” Dergarabedian says. “There’s a worldwide marketing push involved with a theatrical release that’s a whole different animal to just going into streaming.” Latest figures suggest that marketing a Hollywood film globally costs as “little” as $35 million and as much as $200 million.
It explains why Adam Sandler famously signed his first four-movie Netflix deal in 2014 and why his new film, Happy Gilmore 2, a sequel to the big-screen golf comedy from 1996, has been released on Netflix only. It also explains why Sandler’s most recent four-movie deal with the streamer, signed last year, is alleged to have earned him $275 million — it’s clearly cheaper than pushing his films into the multiplex.
“And so, yes, it’s a fragile market place but, thankfully, The Naked Gun did not bomb,” Dergarabedian continues. “And if Freakier Friday makes $40 million-plus domestically [in the US], that could be one that emboldens studios to get on board and hopefully open the door to more comedies”.
It does seem that expense means that most comedies go to streaming rather than cinema. You can understand studio reluctance if a comedy costs a lot and does not break much of a profit. Even so, there are still cinematic comedy releases. I don’t think you need a huge budget to make a genuinely brilliant comedy. The odd gem on streaming, though I don’t think we will ever again see a golden age of cinema comedy. If you were to revise lists of the greatest comedy films ever like this, this and this, in a couple of decades, would there be any new inclusions in the top twenties?! I think that a really great comedy film is as powerful and important as any other type of film. It uplifts people. Jokes and scenes lingering long in the mind. Yet, with the very few comedy films we get each year, none really have the same wow factor as one from years ago. It extends a bit to the sitcom world, though it isa a different reality to get a series made compared to a film. There are bound to be so many great concepts waiting to get made. Films that genuinely could challenge the heavyweights. Is the reality that comedy films are mostly going to be made for streaming platforms, and a particular type demanded? I don’t think a more woke society means comedy writers are limited, as most of the all-time best comedy films could exist today and are not noted for being offensive or outdated – though there are events and aspects of each that could not exist today. This year has really not given too many screen and cinema comedy gold, though things could change. To see the death of cinema could would be…
A truly sad thing.