More broadly, what we often forget about those late '70’s comedies (and movies in general) is that there is a lot of misery and serious content in them. We remember the food fight and the Pearl Harbor speech, but we forget, for example, the scene where the white frat boys walk into a black club to watch Otis Day and just how uncomfortable it was. It was only really in the 1980s when movie makers cut all that stuff out to make fast-paced laugh-a-minute comedies that are largely insubstantial dreck (compare The Blues Brothers with The Blues Brothers 2000, for example).
In non-comedy genres consider Saturday Night Fever (which had about three minutes of actual dancing and over an hour of existential angst and occasional violence) or the original Fame (with its abortion clinic scene, or the sexual exploitation scene, or the discussions of illiteracy, homophobia, and death).
Sometimes the problem isn’t that they’re not funny anymore; the problem is that we’ve forgotten all the non-funny bits they’ve always had.
I loved Martin Mull’s comedy albums when I was in high school, so when I had the opportunity to get them all again during the Napster years less than 20 years later, I downloaded every track I could find. I can’t explain why, but he just wasn’t funny anymore. Maybe this is why Fernwood/America Tonight has never been dragged out of the vaults, even after Fred Willard’s resurgence in popularity in the last few decades.
The example that comes to mind, for me, is Stir Crazy (1980) with Richard Pryor and Gene Wilder. This was a big hit at the time, and I remembered it being hilarious. I re-watched it recently and was surprised at how little comedy there is in it. There are a few funny scenes a couple of good gags, but much of it is about how terrifying it would be to go to prison.
I’m often baffled at the reverence some old comedies get, since when I watch them there are no actual, you know, jokes. Maybe one or two, but everything else just trudges along. Try watching Private Benjamin, which was nominated for three Oscars, and count how many actual laughs there are in it. In film school we watched Shampoo and aside from one genuine showstopper of a line delivery by Julie Christie, there were zero laughs, just a couple of hours of Warren Beatty stuttering and mumbling while bed-hopping.
Animal House was cited above as having some darker bits, but the number of actual comedic hits in that film is pretty high. It came out within a couple of years of Airplane! which also delivered the funny. So there were a few bright spots in that era.
Though it’s not as funny to me now as it was when I was 18, I’m good with it for the first half. The second half; after graduation and that silly cold-war adventure bit was as hokey and unwatchable to my friends and I as late teens as it is now.
Love At First Bite (George Hamilton as Dracula in 1979 New York). LOVED it in 1981, remembered it fondly for 30 years, finally tried to rewatch about ten years ago, couldn’t get through it. Many of the gag lines were still great but the movie surrounding them was unwatchable.
What’s your opinion on Harpo Marx? Because that’s who Belushi was channeling there, and in most of the rest of the movie. He barely has any dialog in the film… until the big speech, which is great partially, because it’s such a "Harpo speaks!’ moment.
Somehow, the Three Stooges never get old. Slapstick comedy never gets dated.
There was one episode that actually shocked me a bit. Moe, Larry and Curly had done a babysitting job and were congratulating themselves for being so responsible. The camera then moves down to the baby, suckling on the barrel of a gun.
Harpo Marx’s character was the “innocent worker of magic”, similar to the character Curley in the Three Stooges. The best modern incarnation would be Mr. Bean.
Harpo Marx is an agent of chaos, a trickster god like Loki or Bugs Bunny, whose job is to mock the conventions of society and prick the bubbles of the pretentious. Mr. Bean is a mere comic bumbler. The two archetypes couldn’t be more different.
Christmas Vacation. But that’s probably because I over-watched it. Probably watched it four times the first Christmas. We still give it a viewing at that time of year, but it’s mostly just chuckles with a couple of guffaws.
I saw Curly more like the Holy Fool, the Mystic, the Outsider Artist, the Chaotician. Harpo was the Innocent, who saw the End of Innocence ahead and longed for it as he feared it too.
I thought waaaaay too much about the Marx Brothers and the Stooges. I still do.
I’m almost regretting changing my major from English to Anthropology because I could no longer hang out with English majors . . . WAIT! I did anyway and my profs in neither camp talked like that. I just didn’t go to a good enough school and I wasn’t a good enough student.
Thank you for the responses. “Holy Fool” was the phrase I was trying to think of. And “satyr” is a good description for one aspect of the Harpo Marx character.