Inspired by this thread, I got to thinking, is it difficult to be elitist about film comedies? Many of my friends cite Old School or an Adam Sandler movie as their favorite comedies, while mine is probably What About Bob? or a Monty Python movie. While I think my friends have good senses of humor (we find the same things on television or jokes we tell to be mutually humorous), their taste in film comedies seems severely lacking to me.
Elitism is easy when evealuating other film genres. “You didn’t like Amelie? Well, then you must be an uncultured idiot who is unappreciative of nuance and creativity in film” seems about right, while saying the same thing about Monty Python and the Holy Grail seems malapropos.
I think it certainly is possible to be elitist about comedies–I definitely am. For instance, I love Rushmore, Napoleon Dynamite, and Christopher Guest movies; but I hate Meet the Parents, Dodgeball, etc. It’s definitely possible to make distinctions between comedies based on the frequency of scatalogical humor, slapstick, cheap shots, and other stuff.
It may be easier to be elitist about comedies than any other genre. There’s smart comedy and dumb comedy and it’s normally no problem whatsoever to tell the difference. Monty Python is obviously smart comedy.
I’m completely elitist in favor of smart comedy. And I wanted to rip the throat out of that little twerp in Amelie.
Definitely. I find myself to be elitest in comedies more so than any other genre. Take, for instance, my Zoolander loving sister and friends. I despise them. I find myself laughing the most at Dr. Strangelove (or…), Happiness of the Katakruris (maybe this is for different reasons), Meet the Feebles (once again), UHF, Airplane!, and Monty Python. The comedies I enjoy the most but do not laugh so much at would be things like the aforementioned Rushmore and Brazil. I refused to see Anchorman today on the grounds of Will Ferrel being in it but I do plan to see Napoleon Dynamite. It happens.
I guess I’m the same way, in that I have to think some of my friends have severely damaged humor receptors. Scary Movie 3? Dodgeball? I couldn’t understand how they could be funny to anyone. It may be just a simple matter of what’s fresh. For instance, I love Rushmore, Royal Tenenbaums, Old School, Billy Madison, Zoolander, Meet the Parents, and Airplane!. However, with each watching of an Adam Sandler movie, I feel like the quality drops to zero. Maybe if I had seen Little Nicky before any other Sandler flick, it would’ve been my favorite of the bunch. Maybe the same thing is happening to me with Ben Stiller/Wilson Brothers movies. Maybe what your friends (and mine) have as their favorite movies are simply the first of that type of comedy they’ve seen. Or, you know, maybe your friends (and mine) are dumb. I could accept either explanation if someone said it was the truth.
There’s going to be a real problem here in determining what is “smart” or not.
E.g., to me:
Monty Python films: very smart.
Rushmore: mildly smart.
What about Bob?: insanely (is that the right word?) dumb.
Amelie: A smart romantic comedy. I.e., the focus is on romance told in a bit of a humorous way, not a vehicle for laughs. So, not in the right category for this discussion.
As to the elitism issue and comedies. People have been debating this for decades. Are Chaplin and Marx Brothers movies “intelligent films” or not? Etc.
And just for the record: What is wrong with “What about Bob?”. It’s in the same class as “Meet the Parents” and such. Where someone is forced thru the entire movie to jump thru hoops that they would never do in real life. Unrealistic beyond belief. If you don’t buy the premise …
To me funny is funny, whether it is stupid or not. I liked Dodgeball, even though it was stupid. I hate anything with Adam Sandler, because it’s stupid and unfunny. I liked Brazil, even though it wasn’t laugh a minute it was smart. Monty Python is sometimes dumb, you have to admit. I mean the fish slapping was hilarious, but it wasn’t something you’d analyze.
> Many of my friends cite Old School or an Adam Sandler movie as their favorite
> comedies, while mine is probably What About Bob? or a Monty Python movie.
My reaction to someone who told me that their favorite comedy was Old School or an Adam Sandler movie would be to ask if they had seen any film at all more than five years old. If they hadn’t, what’s the point in even asking them what their favorite film is? Someone with that little experience in film can’t make a reasonable statement about what good comedy is. Please understand, I’m not saying that an older film will necessarily be better than a new one. The point is that there is a long history to film and if you only know recent films then you only know a little about the range of possible films.
I would ask anyone who chose a new film as their favorite comedy what they thought about Duck Soup. This is deliberately chosen because it came out before the birth of anyone posting to this thread (I think). It’s full of both physical comedy and intellectual jokes. It’s surrealist comedy in some ways. It’s a four-man comedy group (the Marx Brothers) working at the top of their form. This isn’t to say that it’s the greatest comedy in history. Maybe it is. Maybe Monty Python and the Holy Grail is. For all I know, maybe some Adam Sandler comedy is. But if someone is going to choose their favorite comedy based on just the films that came out over the past year, well, they’re entitiled to their opinion, but I don’t see any point in worrying about that opinion.
I think people are more likely to be elitist about comedians and the comedies they happen to appear in than the comedies themselves. You think: So-and-so is in this movie? I’m not seeing it. And judge the work without even experiencing it.
Think “crappy movie comedy” and you tend to think of the same comedians/actors, some of whom appear in this thread. They have their fans, but there’s a lot of people who don’t find their humor or performances particularly appealing.
Adam Sandler.
Martin Lawrence.
Ashton Kutcher.
The Wayans.
Pauly Shore.
Carrot Top.
Whoopi Goldberg.
Most of the lesser luminaries from TV’s Saturday Night Live.
There’s a lot of comedians whose work is hit and miss, depending on the project.
Mel Brooks.
Eddie Murphy.
Steve Martin.
Ben Stiller.
Will Farrell. (I grudgingly bestow this.)
Billy Crystal.
Robin Williams.
There’s a rarified group of people whose comedic performances tend to produce mostly good reviews.
Diane Keaton.
Bill Murray.
Jack Black.
Hugh Grant.
AaaaaAAAand there’s the group of people who are funny as hell, who are simply unable to carry a whole movie.
Bill Cosby.
Ray Romano.
Chris Rock.
Most of the lesser lumninaries from TV’s Saturday Night Live.
I liked the Airplane movies, the Naked gun movies(but they get worse as the series goes one),Austin Powers(same as airplane movies), Marx Bros, Charlie Chaplin, the Three Stooges, Amelie, Meet the Parents, Monty Python. I liked Royal Tennebuams, but didn’t see anything particulary hilarious about it. Zoolander did very little for me(but I liked the bit about the computer and the “Center for kids who can’t read good”).
Mel brooks movies are hit or miss, I like most Terry Gilliam or Cohn Bros movies. I’m also a fan of Adam Sandler and Jim Carrey, and frankly cannot understand the hatred for him. I also like the Kevin Smith Jersey movies(including Jay and Silent Bob strike back, which I’m watching as I write this).
However, I can’t really enjoy the scary movie movies or the more recent Stiller films.
I like what I find funny and I don’t what I don’t.
Umm… I like Monty Python as much as anyone, but let’s not get carried away with how “smart” their comedy was. “MP & The Holy Grail” was FILLED with potty humor, as were dozens of Monty Python’s TV sketches (characters named Harold Stools, Conrad Poohs, and Mrs. Smegma… need I go on?).
Even the Python sketches that alluded to Great Literature or European History invariably combined those subjects with bathroom humor and/or Benny Hill-ish naughtiness.
So, while it’s fine if you love Monty Python and hate, say, the Farrelly Brothers, don’t kid yourself! As often as not, Monty Python’s humor was as crude, vile and puerile as the Farrellys’. A dick joke is a dick joke, even if it’s inserted into a sketch about Elizabethan poets, and a poo-poo joke is a poo-poo joke, even if it’s part of a sketch that mentions John Fowles.
I find myself liking far fewer comedies than dramas, I think because comedy is more subjective. I can enjoy a drama even if I don’t identify with the crisis of the characters, or if I don’t like them much, or if any number of things - I can still “build the machine” and take the movie on its own merits. But if a comedy dosen’t strike me as funny, it dosen’t work. It dosen’t matter how I feel about the plot or the characters or the structure or what have you - it has to make me laugh, it’s the structure of the genre. Not many movies do that, so I find myself avoiding the comedy section at Blockbuster and probably missing out on things that I’d like if I tried them.
But what other people like isn’t always a good barometer, because it’s so personal - all the guys I know love Slap Shot, but they also love Adam Sandler, so I never saw it until I said “what the hell” and rented it one night and now it’s one of my favorite movies. But I still don’t like Adam Sandler.
I think we need to determine what is comedy, first.
I also agree with you about Amelie. I love the movie Amelie. Love it. I am sitting here scratching my head in wonderment at the many posters here referring to it as a comedy. To me, it was a story with amusing and charming aspects. I do not view it as comedy at all.
Of course it always subjective, but how then, is comedy being defined?
My taste in comedy is broad. It ranges from Dumb and Dumber (a classic in stupid humor) to ‘smart comedy’. What I really dislike is when a comedian makes the same film over and over with the only difference being the title of the movie and the main character’s job (i.e, Adam Sandler). I also hate ‘comedies’ that take too long in between funny parts - There is no reason to have to wait 35 minutes until the next laugh.
Sometimes, it does boil down to the actor. Even Zoolander would have been funny if anyone else played the main role other than Ben Stiller. A lot of people hate Dumb and Dumber and yes, the plot is pretty basic and simple. The funniness comes with Jim Carey’s delivery. Had anyone else played that part, that movie would have sucked.
Being elitist about comedies is as simple as anything else. Carrying a pretense to inflate your own ego by means of trashing other people is an equal oppotunity waste of time.
Gene Siskel used to say (I’m paraphrasing) : no one can tell you what’s funny and no one can tell you what’s sexy.
Good comedy is whatever makes you laugh. I am able to appreciate “smart” comedy and “dumb” comedy (those are labels only), and I think they both have value, but a person gets elitist when they start to disparage the people who make/enjoy the other kind.
Actually, I need to admit a slight elitism for myself, because I actually feel sorry for people who can’t laugh at Ben Stiller completely zipping his nuts in fly, or the guy in Jackass sticking a Matchbox Car up his butt and having the gall to go get it X-rayed.
So, yes, people can be elitist about comedy.
further. . .
Smart Monty Python?. . .do we mean the Monty Python with . . .
The fat guy puking all over a restaurant?
An industry of FUNNY WALKS?
A sketch, based entirely on saying “SPAM” a lot?
An attack rabbit?
They CAN be smart. . .but they’re a great example of people who appreciate humor across the spectrum.
I also don’t know why people keep referring to Amélie (getting all pretentious with the accents, I am) as a comedy. The OP brought it up as an example of something that wasn’t a comedy, or at least I the way I read it. S/he said (paraphrasing), “You can be elitist about other genres (for instance romance films or whatever Amélie was), whereas you can’t be elitist about comedies… or can you?”
