So a couple of weeks ago, my wife and I ran across the movie "Drinking Buddies’ from 2013 on Netflix. It’s billed as a comedy/drama/romance, and has the cast to make that work. Olivia Wilde, Ron Livingston, Anna Kendrick, Jason Sudeikis and Jake Johnson.
And… it wasn’t funny. Not even one bit. No jokes, no funny situations, no pratfalls, and generally nothing comedic in the least bit. It wasn’t cringe comedy, it wasn’t deadpan/tongue in cheek type absurd stuff.
It was a straight up drama- wasn’t even really romantic. Granted I only got through about the first 45 minutes or so, but I’d think that’s enough for the funny to reveal itself.
Why do they call this a comedy? Is there some style of comedy that’s not intended to amuse you that I’m unaware of?
I can’t speak for Drinking Buddies, but yes, I’ve seen plenty of “comedies” that had no laughs at all. (There are more than one SNL episodes like that.)
I attribute that either to my lack of the proper sense of humor for the intent of the film, or the writers being on a coke binge. More likely the latter.
Haven’t seen it, but descriptions say that it was mostly improvised based on the barest outline of a plot. That would certainly have an effect on the pacing and so forth.
I think that’s called marketing. By calling it a drama/comedy/romance, they can attract more people to watch it than if they called it a drama—people like comedies, and most women like romances, even ones with a dramatic angle to them. They thought adding the words comedy and romance to the genre would draw a larger audience. You’re proof that it worked.
There’s a big stretch of time in American comedy that baffles me because there doesn’t deem to be anything actively funny going on. Private Benjamin has like two big laugh lines. Shampoo has one. The whole concept of Tootsie is so unbelievable to me that I’m taken right out of it. Then there are the “comedies” in which characters just act frantic or “zany” to no effect. The original version of The In-Laws is viewed as a classic by many; it’s even recently been added to the Criterion Collection. I watched it with a dull look of boredom and virtually never chuckled. And some supposed comedies do both: Night Shift plods along for most of its running time, then there’s a lot of frantic running around trying to pass as a climax.
The Goldbergs. Tried to watch it a few years ago. Not funny. Tried again this season after the producers fired one of the most annoying persons in Hollywood. Still not funny.
I’m not what you’d call comedically demanding. I tend to laugh at most comedy, although I will admit that cringe comedy and/or whatever you call Seinfeld/Curb your Enthusiasm isn’t generally my favorite. But I can see why it’s funny to some, and I can definitely tell when it’s supposed to be funny.
But this wasn’t that. There just wasn’t anything actually funny about it- the characters weren’t in unintentionally or ironically humorous situations despite themselves playing it straight (I could see that being funny, for example). It was just relationship drama- not even really a romantic movie, despite being billed as a sort of rom-com.
I tried watching Seinfeld. I watched about three of the early episodes. It wasn’t funny at all. I quickly decided that it wasn’t for me, so I didn’t watch any more. I later saw the finale. Even seeing them get arrested didn’t amuse me.
We watched Napolean Dynamite and nothing about it was funny to me.
I watched a season of Seinfeld only due to when it was on. One episode had all of the elements come together such that I thought it was brilliant. Not sure if that was the first one I watched but it was early on because I kept watching it expecting that. Nothing else was as good.
I don’t enjoy cringe comedy and while it is less, it seems to be the big thing for a while, making me avoid comedies.
I didn’t watch SNL for decades from the 90s until 2016. I didn’t find most of it funny. After TLG we watched SNL until covid. What I realized is that not having paid attention to politics before, SNL did a lot of political humor. Yes, I got the big jokes. What I found out, though, is that they would turn some small thing said by some little known politician into a whole skit. If you knew the origin of the skit, it was funny or at least you could tell what they were doing. Without that, it made no sense.
(Mulaney’s musicals were funny to me even as weird as they got.)
I’m sure with all that I have watched there are more but those were my standouts.
Comedy movies are much better seen in a crowded theater than on your couch at home. Laughter is contagious, and comedy movies are much better with a large audience.
I know, that’s why I’m so baffled. It wasn’t a bad movie, it just wasn’t funny. At all.
And I’m not a person who didn’t find Seinfeld or Napoleon Dynamite funny. Seinfeld just wasn’t my favorite; it was a show I’d watch if it was on in the dorm TV room and people were hanging out, but that’s it. I actually laughed out loud at parts of Napoleon Dynamite.
But “Drinking Buddies” didn’t even have parts where I could identify attempts at humor. That’s what’s so weird about it.
Was this a case where it was evident they attempted to set up jokes, gags, witty remarks, and funny situations only to fail miserably or there was no effort made to be funny at all because the movie was really a serious drama mismarketed as a comedy? There probably should be a distinction made between the two categories for would-be funny “comedies” in this thread.
Maybe they were using an older sense of “comedy”, in which the question isn’t whether the play (or whatever) is funny, but whether it has a happy ending or a tragic one?