Some shows revel in dumbitude. Lines, characters, or plots
Earl
King of the Hill
Jeff Foxworthy
Cable Guy
Jackass
Do you think these sorts of things are
A) Funny (watchable)
B) Unfunny (dive for the remote)
I love Earl and Jackass.I’ll throw Beavis and Butthead in the mix as well.All on my TIVO.
The other three I don’t dislike,but I don’t TIVO them.
Not funny. Cringe-inspiring.
heh-he-heh-he-he-heh, you said lines.
Huh-huh-huh. and then you said plops
No way, Butthead, he said p-p-p-p-hlots. Kinda like diharrea
Y’know Beavis you can be cool sometimes.
YMMV
Sgt Schwartz
Most of those aren’t truly dumb however. They use stupidity as a vehicle for brilliance (sometimes) which is completely different. Dumb is just throwing something like a kick to the nuts up there and waiting for the laughs to roll in.
My Name is Earl is brilliant. Jeff Foxworthy invented a type of Redneck humor which he was quite good at even if it is getting a little old now. King of the Hill is a quality nuanced show. Beavis and Butthead is about the closest to truly dumb that I like.
I think you are confusing the setting and subject matter for the quality of humor. They aren’t the same thing.
Truly dumb is Adam Sandler, some Jim Carey, Police Academy, and Paulie Shore.
I kind of liked Beavis and Butthead, only because I thought it was actually making fun of the dumb shows. Then again maybe I was giving it too much credit.
I usually can’t stand just plain dumb stuff. I never thought I Love Lucy was very funny because she just did dumb stuff. I don’t watch any of the shows mentioned in the OP.
Many of the characters on **Earl ** may be dumb (I’m looking at you, Randy), but the writing and the characterization is very sharp.
Not generally in a comedy. I do sometimes laugh in spite of myself, but I don’t think I’ve ever thought, “that looks incredibly dumb! I must see it!”
But I do when it takes itself seriously. I don’t watch anything regularly “just to make fun of it” but there have certainly been times when I’ve been clicking through channels and stopped at Pokemon or Seventh Heaven or Passions or any televangelist program and sat there laughing myself silly at it.
So Peter Griffin does virtually nothing for me
but Horatio Caine is comedy gold.
I find I don’t like The Sopranos because too many of the episode plots were crises created by the characters themselves, who were too damn dumb to control their tempers or think rationally.
Curb Your Enthusiam, same reason. Family Guy also to a degree, whenever Peter starts acting like an infant.
Dumb is generally not funny.
What he said.
Dumb is… The War at Home. Or about 98% of SNL’s output over the past several years. Earl is not dumb. Adam Sandler generally is.
(so I guess I’m just agreeing with everyone else in the thread!)
Love Earl, never seen Cable Guy (unless we’re talking about the Jim Carrey movie?), have laughed at Foxworthy and King of the Hill but wouldn’t seek them out, and would dive for the remote if Jackass came on.
Of the shows listed in the OP, I haven’t seen Earl or Jackass. Foxworthy is like an internet joke that was funny the first time you got it but people keep sending it to you over and over… King of the Hill is pretty good since it uses idiocy as satire. But I rarely watch it in favor of other shows. Larry the Cable Guy was unfunny to me the second I heard his voice. His jokes are weak to begin with and pandering to the LCD just makes it worse.
The occasional dumb joke can work very well if done right. The “walk this way” joke in Young Frankenstein is a good example of this. But you have to acknowledge that the joke is dumb to really get it right. Same with the “muffin man” gag in Shrek and the “I remember the Alamo” joke in Pee Wees Big Adventure. But all of these are dumb jokes rather than jokes about or by dumb people. So they may not apply to the OP.
By the OP’s definition, yes I think I find “dumb” funny.
I laugh at dumb people doing dumb things. I don’t take this to mean that the joke-writing is dumb, or that it’s easy to do dumb. Like other forms of humor, dumb can be well-done, or poorly done.
I enjoyed Dumb and Dumber. So yeah, to answer the OP. I think dumb is funny sometimes.
In fact, if I may be so bold, I think anyone who can’t see any humor in dumb comedy needs to yank the stick out of their butts.
This is a great question. By “dumb,” I’m assuming this to mean material based on roles where the character in real life would probably be taking the short bus to school (Randy in “My Name is Earl” would be a good example). I’m going to second other posters who’ve responded, “It depends.”
Oliver Hardy and Stan Laurel are by any definition “dumb,” but their material is literally classic. Watching Stan try to eat wax decorative fruit because he doesn’t know any better will make me laugh until my ribs hurt. Watching Jim Carrey talk with his butt? Not so much, although I probably would have been rolling in the aisles when I was eight.
I know part of this depends on personal taste, but I have a very hard time trying to explain whey I think one is funny and another isn’t. I don’t think I have the vocabulary. To me, it’s not even the same type of humor. Laurel and Hardy is paradoxically subtle in a broad sort of way, if that makes any sense at all.
I’m pretty sure that I do like dumb things and everyone knows it because when Dodgeball came out my friends said, “you need to watch it.” I was insulted because that movie looked pretty stupid but I watched it anyway and I was sitting there thinking how wrong everyone was about me until the wrench throwing scene.
I can also admit that everyone talks about how Borat is so clever revealing these attitudes and exposing all this ignorance that’s normally hidden by politically correct manners, and I do appreciate it and see what’s interesting and amusing about it but deep down none of that is as funny to me as a guy with a big moustache holding a bag of poo. The naked fight scene was my favourite part.
There’s definitely a fine line. If someone accidentally farts then that’s funny but a person can’t go around farting on purpose and be hilarious. There’s a type of dumb humour that comes out of a point of view of making fun of smart things or ideas and there’s a type of dumb humour that’s making fun of dumb people and neither of those ever work for me. But there’s also a type of dumb humour that makes no judgment about anything. It’s hard for me to say when something is going to make me laugh. Objectively Jim Carey should be funnier to me than Rob Schneider but somehow Jim Carey always seems like he’s taking a shit on the world. Rob Schneider could always make me believe he farted by mistake every time so I guess that’s the difference.
Do you think these sorts of things are
A) Funny (watchable)
B) Unfunny (dive for the remote)
**Earl ** {A} Very funny, has a Kevin Smith feel to the writing and the subjects touch upon are quite brilliant despite the lack of intelligence of the characters. The writing is very smart and creative. Additionally the music chosen to work with the scenes is the best I have seen since Northern Exposure. (A perfect show for 4 years).
King of the Hill: {B} I do not like the show or the humor of this one or Beavis and Butthead, and yet this same creative group did the incredibly intelligent and well written Daria. I still have not figured it out.
Jeff Foxworthy: {B} Built a career off one funny routine that set his own audience back to the HeeHaw days. The world may have been a better place without him.
Cable Guy: {B} The bad movie or the bad show? I cannot stand either.
Jackass: {B} Hate this with a passion. I would actually prefer to see this off the air.
Overall, I do not like shows that go for humor with dumb characters. Somehow, Earl bucks this trend.
I will note that I would add shows like Friends to your list of dumb character driven sitcoms. I never liked Friends and I always found it dumb.
I do not like Dumb and Dumber. I am not a big fan of Laurel and Hardy or the Three Stooges. I do love Abbott and Costello. I believe their humor to be smarter than the others I just mentioned and yet Costello usually played dumb. In the same category, Burns and Allen were brilliant even if Gracie’s character was anything but smart. I guess I like Vaudeville patter.
Jim
“…Movies where you cared whose ass it was, and why it was farting.”
I like most of the examples in the OP. Additionally, Jackass: The Movie and the Naked Gun movies contain some of the funniest stuff (OJ Simpson’s journey falling around the boat) I’ve seen.
But then it depends on the actor. I hate Jim Carrey and tolerate Adam Sandler so I’d have to force myself to sit through their crap to get to something funny.
No but I don’t know why you dumped Foxworthy among them. I think he’s very bright and really funny. The rest range from mildly amusing (Earl) to annoying (Jackass, B&B).