Seeing this thread, I immediately thought of The Duchess and the Dirtwater Fox, a 1970s western farce with Goldie Hawn and George Segal. Segal plays a (very bad) card hustler who steals money belonging to a group of outlaws; Hawn is a dance hall girl/prostitute who steals the money from Segal. Zaniness ensues while Segal chases Hawn and the bandits chase Segal. My favorite portion of the film is when Hawn pretends to be a nanny to scam her way into a Mormon polygamist’s harem. She likes the idea of being one of a multiplicyt of wives – looks forward to “one night on and six nights off.” It’s dumb and silly and I laugh my ass off, especially when Hawn and Segal try to communicate secretly in front of one of the Mormons by speaking ‘French’ (consisting of a completely understandable melange of pig Latin, Spanish, and Yiddish).
(I saw this in the theater at a ridiciulously young age considering how raunchy a film it is. I think my mom thought it was a cartoon about animals.)
Also The Owl and the Pussycat, with Segal and Barbra Streisand, where Segal plays a mousy author and Streisand a prostitute Segal tries to reform. Don’t remember it that well, as I haven’t seen it in ages, but I do remember Segal trying to defend his writing the line “The dawn spits the sunlight at the morning.”
Murder by Death. Probably more silly than stupid, as there is a clever conceit behind the film – where parodies of famous detectives (Peter Falk’s Sam Diamond, Elsa Lanchester’s Miss Jessica Marbles, David Nivens & Maggie Smith’s Dick and Dora Charleston, etc.) are gathered together by the nutsy Lionel Twain (a hilarious Truman Capote) to solve an unsolvable mystery. The performances are gold (especially Peter Sellers and Alec Guinness as a faux Charlie Chan and a blind butler, respectively) and if you love the mystery novel genre, you’ll appreciate some of the parodies – broad though they are.
I would’ve once put the original The In-Laws in this category, but it’s become something of a cult favorite, deservedly so, and lke Murder I don’t really think it’s stupid, just very very silly. Alan Arkin’s reactions to Peter Falk’s tale of massive Tsetse flies carrying away small African children are priceless. Also: “Serpentine! Serpentine!”
So maybe I’m blurring the distinction between stupid and silly. Some of my favorite British comedies including most of Monty Python, Black Adder and Red Dwarf are awfully silly, but not necessarily stupid. I guess Nigel Tufnel really was right – there is a fine line between stupid and clever. Or maybe the line is simply: “If I like it, it’s silly; if you like it, it’s stupid.” 