Nowadays, it’s rare to find a movie that gets a great deal of its humor/drama from a story about people of different social/economic classes who encounter each other and rub each other the wrong way (or the right way) and sparks fly. It’s easier for me to list a few examples than to come up with an all-encompassing definition, so here we go:
The Philadelphia Story – Jaded newspaper photographer and writer are assigned to do deep coverage of a high-society wedding. A classic screwball comedy, and not at all the collection of cliches it might have been … which is why it’s a classic.
Overboard – Rich bitch played by Goldie Hawn snubs and cheats a carpenter played by Kurt Russell, then falls off her yacht and develops amnesia, leading Russell to convince her she’s his wife so he’ll have someone to clean up after him and his kids. Very predictable and cliched, but still fun.
Trading Places – Evil Wall Street brothers decide to fuck over a stockbroker in their employ and replace him with a street beggar, just to settle a bet. Hijinks ensue. Also predicatable, also fun anyway.
I know there’s probably a ton out there, probably in the rom-com department, but I can’t think of them offhand … but I’m betting the Dopers can. What have we got?
MY COUSIN VINNY. The script was specifically written to be a “fish out of water” film about a New Yorker in Dixie, and it works on that level, but the director, Jonathan Lynn, saw it as a class comedy and directed it that way instead. Vinny, Lisa, and the two utes are all working class while the judge and prosecutor are white collar Ivy League patrician stock.
Would things like Local Hero and The Englishman Who Went Up A Hill And Came Down A Mountain count? I’d consider them just fish-out-of-water comedies, but there’s definitely an element of class involved as well.
There’s definitely a strong class element to British dramas like Maurice, Jude and Lady Chatterley’s Lover…
Stella Dallas (the 1937 version) The scene in the Pullman sleeper car where the college kids are laughing at the lower-class heroine so her daughter goes into her berth to cuddle with her is one of those great 1930’s tearjerker moments.
Any adaptation of anything Dickens ever wrote. Three good recent(ish) ones are the BBC adaptations of Our Mutual Friend, Bleak House, and Little Dorrit.
Any of the adaptations of The Prince and the Pauper.
Shakespeare in Love touches on class issues - Shakespeare was just a low-class ink-stained scribbler, in Lord Wessex’s lofty opinion.
Hitchcock’s Rebecca has class as a subtext. Mrs. Danvers clearly feels that the second Mrs. DeWinter isn’t in the first’s league in more ways than one. Not a “fun” movie, but a pretty good one (although the book is better IMHO).
The second sentences hints you know this, but the first sentence suggests you don’t, so just to be clear: the title of the porno is The Devil in Miss Jones.
I’ve seen “My Cousin Vinnie” and it never struck me as that much of a class comedy, the humor seemed mostly to be clash of cultures stuff, with Vinnie and his New York-ish buddies clashing with the Deep Southern folks they encounter.