You know, the kind where the laws of causality, physics and narrative can be upended at a whim. As distinct from, say, Analyze This or American Pie, which, implausible as the storylines might be, are clearly set in a universe similar to this one.
Over the top? Cartoonish?
I believe “Slapstick” is as close as you will get.
I would categorize that type of comedy as farce .
BTW, stop calling me Shirley!!!
Absurdist?
All the movies you mentioned happen to be parodies or spoofs, but I think the category you’re describing is a bit broader than that. And all the films you mentioned are ZAZ comedies—i.e. from the Zucker-Abrahams-Zucker team—but they don’t have exclusive rights to the genre. Arguably, Lewis Carroll, Monty Python, and Douglas Adams all produced work of this type, and many animated cartoons fall into this genre as well. Anything can happen as long as it gets a laugh.
I’m not entirely satisfied with anything anyone’s suggested yet, but I can’t find the right term either.
Those do describe the movies in question, but they aren’t exactly a general name for that type of movie.
No, as I understand it the term “slapstick” refers to purely physical comedy, and may indeed be “set in a universe similar to this one.”
The phrase “sight gag” has to be in there somewhere, reflecting the number of oddball visual jokes contained within.
I would call it “Shirley.”
Seriously?
No, and don’t call me Seriously.
I’ve always called them “Airplane! Movies,” since that was the film that really popularized the genre. But I guess that makes it sound like I’m talking about movies about airplanes.
ZAZ had a sight-gag film before Airplane!, though, The Kentucky Fried Movie (1977) named for the comedy troupe (The Kentucky Fried Theatre) the three formed after graduation. This movie is a disparate collection of absurdist sketches, with the last half being the short film A Fistful of Yen, a bang-on parody of Enter the Dragon.
It’s definitely R-Rated, though. The “Catholic High School Girls in Trouble” sketch alone is boob city.
But your meaning will become clear if you remember to use Victor Borge’s Phonetic Punctuation: **Airplane **fsss fft
Not if you include the “!”. Duh. :rolleyes:
I sometimes call them Mad Magazine-type spoofs. I think of Ernie Kovacs and Mel Brooks as the best of the breed.
That’s an entirely different sort of movie, altogether.
That’s an entirely different sort of movie.
Screwball comedies? I’ve heard that term, but don’t recall what it was being applied to. It sounds like it would fit, though.
I thought ‘farce’ was good, and I didn’t see you shoot it down. Did you overlook it?
Screwball comedies are 30s romantic comedies about a man and woman who are meant to be together but hate each other and mad fate keeps them apart until the last minute. (I like the theory that they were a response to the Hays code that forbade sex so all the sex was sublimated as violence.) Definitely not Airplane-style movies.
How about ADD movies?