Was thinking about this the other day. Have you ever seen a movie that is so mis-directed that you secretly believe it was intended as a comedy instead of its implied genre? My wife and I thought of several. Heck, we’re convinced a couple of these were intended as comedies.
**The Happening **- Perhaps M. Night Shyamalan’s greatest attempt at a joke. Nothing in this movie even approaches a serious tone. It is so ludicrous, it gives us hilarious comedic moments like:
Battlefield Earth: Come on. Rifftrax was even boring on this one because it is so bad on its own. I found it highly entertaining as a comedy, though, and can almost believe they tried to make a terrible funny movie.
New Moon: This is the second Twilight movie and is directed by the American Pie director. I swear he is messing with us in this one, over-directing it and making it as stupid as possible.
Not precisely what you’re asking, in that the humor was basically intentional, but the movie Demolition Man is now remembered far more for its comedic aspects, and the question of how the three seashells worked, than for the action scenes with Stallone and Snipes.
Not a movie, but the first season of American Horror Story on FX seemed to me to grow increasingly humorous as the ghost population of the house grew and grew, particularly when they started plotting and arguing over who got to kill the baby and adopt the resulting ghost-baby.
Nic Cage is undoubtedly the king of this sort of thing. All through “Vampire’s Kiss,” I kept trying to decide if it was supposed to be funny, or if it was unintentional. I finally decided it didn’t matter what they intended, and just enjoyed it as a black comedy.
The new Jack Reacher with Tom Cruise was frikkin hilarious. There’s a store called DeFault Auto Parts. I don’t know if it was supposed to be funny, but it is sooo by the numbers that it’s a parody.
I always thought Hellraiser was more of an enjoyable dark comedy then a horror movie. It has a few tense moments, but they are overwhelmed by how outrageous everything that’s happening is.
I think the impact of the sequel was especially diluted by all the humor. Way too much funny in that movie, kept yanking me out of the story. Many of the one-liners may as well have been delivered with the character looking directly into the camera.
It’s still a great movie, though.
BTW and FWIW I still think the first one is the better of the two.
I’m sure it was completely unintentional, but I can’t help laughing during The Scorpion King. Right from the first scene when the Scorpion King’s army walked through the desert and kept randomly falling over. They just sort of toppled. I was the only one in the theater laughing. Then the slave girl’s outfit. the plot. The hammy acting. It’s so campy, it can’t help but be funny.
