Now, some movies just aren’t funny at all. “The Seventh Seal” is not a laugh riot. “Rashomon” is not played for gags.
But it seems to me the very least funny movie ever made must actually be a movie that was SUPPOSED to be funny. The expectation of gags would make the absence of laughter even worse than having no laughter in a movie you weren’t expecting any anyway. “Least Funny,” really, means the delta between INTENDED laughter and actual laughter.
So in your opinion, what’s the least funny movie ever?
I personally would have to choose “Canadian Bacon.” This was Michael Moore’s only feature film, so far’s I know. It’s sort of a Wag the Dog tale with the U.S. government pretending to be at war with Canada, and a bunch of losers in Buffalo take it too seriously and invade Toronto in a camper, attacking the CN Tower (or as the movie refers to it, the “Canadian National Tower,” a phrase that nobody in the world, not even the CN Tower employees, ever utters.) The movie is painfully, really pathetically unfunny. It looks like it was shot on a budget of about nine dollars. The timing’s off, the direction and camera work are amateurish, the jokes are too stupid to be funny and not offensive enough to be edgy, and the cast appears to be acting at gunpoint. Parts of it appear to be written and directed wholly randomly, such as the part where they get Steven Wright to play a Mountie. I guess they thought “Hey, Steven Wright is funny, let’s find a place for him.” Yeah, doesn’t work.
The movie is just negatively funny. Not only did I not crack a smile once, I had to watch “Ghostbusters” and “A Fish Called Wanda” to such some of the suckitude out of me so I could laugh again. I was halfway through “A Fish Called Wanda” before I could even smile.
I didn’t really pay attention to the information about Nothing in Common before I watched it. Tom Hanks, Jackie Gleason, should be funny, right? Wrong. Drama, depressing as hell.
I’m sure there are much better (worse?) candidates, but that’s what came to mind.
So you’re looking for the most-bungled comedy ever?
I found myself yawning and looking at my watch far too much during Three Amigos!, I must admit. Good cast, but very, very few laughs. I’d have to say the same about The Jerk, too - and I usually like Steve Martin.
For me, *Austin Powers *was about the unfunniest time I’ve ever spent in a theater. THere are plenty of comedies out there that I know better to even try, so I can’t tell you if Deuce Bigelow is less funny, or any movie with David Spade in it, because I will never have the opportunity to find out.
I’m sure I’ll get crucified for this, but Roberto Benigni’s *Life is Beautiful * is the only movie I ever walked out of. The first 45 minutes or hour was the stupidest sort of Three Stooges style slapstick. I’m sure a 5-year-old would have laughed, but I sure didn’t.
Half Baked was so bad that it wasn’t even funny under the influence of the proper, erm, influences.
I missed out on the first few episodes of Chappelle’s Show just because I didn’t want to have anything to do with anyone in that movie (glad I eventually started watching).
Jim Breuer is anti-funny. He’s an ever-expanding black hole of unfunniness that sucks up all the funny around him so that it can’t even be warped into unintentionally funny. Painfully unfunny.
I despised Nothing But Trouble, with Chevy Chase, Demi Moore, Dan Aykroyd, and John Candy. Also vehemently hated Pink Flamingos, Happiness, Bad Santa, and The Doom Generation, all of which are debatably comedies.
I’m not entirely sure it was meant to be a comedy. . .there were funny parts or funny lines, but they’re Jews in WWII-era Italy, for Pete’s sake…
In the end,
Benigni’s character is matter-of-factly murdered by machine gun while his son huddles in a tiny pillbox after neither of them have seen the wife and mother since they entered the concentration camp. HAHA!
It’s like reading the Diary of Anne Frank expecting to bust a gut:
It’s not really what it’s all about, you know? You can have a funny line or two without the whole thing needing to be laugh-out-loud, and you can include humor while being dark and poignant.
Maybe you were going into it thinking it was supposed to be funny. My suggestion: Watch it again, this time expecting a romance followed by a drama.
Steve Martin and Queen Latifah, both capable of greatness, in Bringing Down the House. The only remotely funny part was Eugene Levy talking jive, and you saw that in the trailer.
Dudley Moore must have some sort of record for unfunny comedies. He followed the blockbusters 10 and Arthur with a decade worth of schlock: Mickey & Maude, Best Defense, Like Father Like Son, Blame it on the Bellboy, etc…
Jason Alexander should not only have fired his agent but had him/her clipped and fed to the fishes for committing him to the absolutely awful Dunston Checks In. You’re co-starring with kids, an orangutan and Faye Dunaway? This is sooooo not where you want to be.
Jerry Lewis’s movie Hardly Working was dreadful and outdated even for the early 80s, though inexplicably it was a huge hit (at least in Europe).
I think it was advertised as a comedy/drama, and IMDB has it listed as such. The first half of the movie was clearly *intended * to be funny; but it fell far short of the mark. I didn’t stick around for the depressing second half.
I always took Life is Beautiful as the story of a very funny man who is victimized by the Holocaust and not a comedy per-se. It’s rather like WILDE, in which Oscar’s witticisms are funny but the movie isn’t a comedy.
I had (artsy) friends tell me how funny (and touching) they thought Dancer in the Dark was. But all I wanted to do afterward was slash my wrists. I just couldn’t figure out what they were laughing at.