ComedyWatch

[GiveMeGore]

At the end of the day, comparing comedies from the 80s to now is like apples and dingleberries. The times are so much different, what we find funny is drastically different too. Technology and the level of politically correctness (or lack there of) just makes for an overall different film. You couldnt get away with showing a mans meat-stick on film in 1984. Couldnt exactly call anyone a cunt on screen either. Not saying it never happened, but I think you smell what I'm stepping in.....

I'll agree on your spoof point. With the exception of the first Scary Movie, they've been fucking awful.

[GiveMeGore]

What does Sandusky and Tuna fish have in common?


they both come in little cans.



Too soon? Oh well, it's Comedy Watch. I'll be here all week either way..... tip your whore.

[traumamama]

At the end of the day, comparing comedies from the 80s to now is like apples and dingleberries. The times are so much different, what we find funny is drastically different too. Technology and the level of politically correctness (or lack there of) just makes for an overall different film. You couldnt get away with showing a mans meat-stick on film in 1984. Couldnt exactly call anyone a cunt on screen either. Not saying it never happened, but I think you smell what I'm stepping in.....

I'll agree on your spoof point. With the exception of the first Scary Movie, they've been fucking awful.

You're right.  Splat, you've had 20 years to compile that list of movies from 80-90.  Comedies don't do well at the box office unless they're family friendly or star Adam Sandler these days.  I truly think there've been a lot of great comedies that just haven't found the audience yet because they were in and out of the theater, if they came to the theater at all.  For example, I think my two favorite comedies maybe of all time are Wet Hot American Summer and Idiocracy.  If it weren't for friends who'd seen them and loved them, I might never have heard of them.  They weren't in theaters, at least not anywhere around here.  I love Observe and Report, and that was in theaters for like a week.

As for spoofs, I like Scary Movie 2 also.  Not Another Teen Movie cracks me up every time I watch it, and Stan Helsing was about 1000x better than the preview looked.  They may not be classics, but who knows 20 years from now what people will think of them.

Splat, you can't compare classic movies to some of the worst movies ever made, dude.  Epic Movie, Date Movie, those shitty movies are made for the lowest common denominator man.

Also, comedy is definitely subjective.  I don't love all of the movies on your list, Splat.  I'd probably choose Kiss Kiss Bang Bang or Smiley Face over a large percentage of your list.

I haven't even gotten to comedies that have actually been popular, like The Hangover, Tropic Thunder, Bridesmaids, Wedding Crashers, Pineapple Express, Team America or Harold and Kumar Go To White Castle.  Or horror-comedies like Shaun of the Dead or The Lost Skeleton of Cadavra.  I literally just started giggling at my seat even thinking about The Lost Skeleton of Cadavra.

Anyway, tl;dr, there's still great comedy out there, you just have to seek it out.

[Marshal Earp]

At the end of the day, comparing comedies from the 80s to now is like apples and dingleberries. The times are so much different, what we find funny is drastically different too. Technology and the level of politically correctness (or lack there of) just makes for an overall different film. You couldnt get away with showing a mans meat-stick on film in 1984. Couldnt exactly call anyone a cunt on screen either. Not saying it never happened, but I think you smell what I'm stepping in.....

I'll agree on your spoof point. With the exception of the first Scary Movie, they've been fucking awful.

You're right.  Splat, you've had 20 years to compile that list of movies from 80-90.  Comedies don't do well at the box office unless they're family friendly or star Adam Sandler these days.  I truly think there've been a lot of great comedies that just haven't found the audience yet because they were in and out of the theater, if they came to the theater at all.  For example, I think my two favorite comedies maybe of all time are Wet Hot American Summer and Idiocracy.  If it weren't for friends who'd seen them and loved them, I might never have heard of them.  They weren't in theaters, at least not anywhere around here.  I love Observe and Report, and that was in theaters for like a week.

As for spoofs, I like Scary Movie 2 also.  Not Another Teen Movie cracks me up every time I watch it, and Stan Helsing was about 1000x better than the preview looked.  They may not be classics, but who knows 20 years from now what people will think of them.

Splat, you can't compare classic movies to some of the worst movies ever made, dude.  Epic Movie, Date Movie, those shitty movies are made for the lowest common denominator man.

Also, comedy is definitely subjective.  I don't love all of the movies on your list, Splat.  I'd probably choose Kiss Kiss Bang Bang or Smiley Face over a large percentage of your list.

I haven't even gotten to comedies that have actually been popular, like The Hangover, Tropic Thunder, Bridesmaids, Wedding Crashers, Pineapple Express, Team America or Harold and Kumar Go To White Castle.  Or horror-comedies like Shaun of the Dead or The Lost Skeleton of Cadavra.  I literally just started giggling at my seat even thinking about The Lost Skeleton of Cadavra.

Anyway, tl;dr, there's still great comedy out there, you just have to seek it out.

I hate basically everything modern. I see so much terrible is so many things these days. I hate technology, social networking, post 90s music, post 90s cars, post 90s political correctness, post 90s male haircuts, EVERYTHING!

But one area I don't see taking a big step back from the 70's, 80's, and 90's is Comedy flicks. My top 5 comedies all time include every decade from the 80's to modern day. "Plains, Trains, and Automobiles" is probably my all time fave followed closely in 2nd or 3rd by "Step Brothers" which is a mere 3 years old I believe.

Now granted, I agree that there was a higher concentration of better comedy in the 80's and 90's but today they still crank out some gems.

[GeneralCinema]

Comedy is absolutely subjective.  There are certain movies that are made for very specific people.  For instance, if you HATED Scott Pilgrim vs. The World, that movie wasn't made for you.  Personally, I enjoyed it.

I also love Mom and Dad Save the World.  I'm a big Jeffrey Jones fan and try to watch anything that he's in.  I also LOVE Pee-Wee Herman and "Weird" Al.  Splatt mentioned UHF.  If you haven't seen it, it's a really, really funny movie.  It just never got its audience since it came out during the same summer of Indiana Jones 3, Batman, and Gremlins 2.

Last night I watched The Other Guys for the first time.  It was absolutely ridiculous.

[traumamama]

Last night I watched The Other Guys for the first time.  It was absolutely ridiculous.

"We found your stolen Prius, it was voting for Ralph Nader."

[GeneralCinema]

Last night I watched The Other Guys for the first time.  It was absolutely ridiculous.

"We found your stolen Prius, it was voting for Ralph Nader."

"Gator's bitches better be using jimmies!"

[Splatterscribe]

Good points one and all (wow, this really sparked quite the conversation) . I think TM and GC hit it closest to the mark concerning where I'm currently at. Maybe that's the issue- it probably is specific to me..I just don't find that many of the modern comedies to be as funny as the ones I listed (which was a mere sampling,  by the way. There are more I could name from the same decade ).

Marshal, I 100% agree that there have been some epic comedies in every decade..aside from Old School and the 40 Year old Virgin (both of which I mentioned earlier),there's also the Hot Shots! films , the Wayne's World movies. the original Men in Black..and  I can point to Office Space as one of my all time favorites..and that bowed in 1999. Let's not forget Happy Gilmore or The Wedding Singer, which are still my favorite Sandler flicks to date. Hell, I saw a terrific comedy by the name of Paul in a theater earlier this year. So,yeah, I realize  there are still decent comedies being made..but I can't help but notice that much longer stretches of time are lapsing between the release of what I consider to be the truly good ones, with copious amounts of crap taking up space in the interim. Whereas back then, there constantly seemed to be something worthwhile popping  up at the local cinema.

TM, I've never seen Smiley Face, but I gotta give you mad props for dropping the title Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang into the mix- that flick  is a work of genius.  As for Stan Helsing, never saw that one either, but I had a similar experience some years ago with Mel Brooks' Dracula Dead and Loving It. It was all but ignored upon release and I missed it in its' initial run. When I finally caught it on home video, it turns out I thought it was terrific (it's worth the entire running time just to see the overblown vampire staking scene play out).

And to further validate GC's assertion that comedy is subjective- I have a few guilty pleasures of my own, films that are utterly stupid and pointless, that received scathing reviews and which pretty much tanked at the box office.... yet somehow,they make me crack up to this day. At the top of this list would be a bizarre 1989 sci fi comedy called Spaced Invaders, which follows a group of really incompetent martians (manifested here as literal little, green men with bulbous heads and antenna) who overhear a rebroadcast of the infamous Orson Welles  Mercury Theater War of the Worlds radio play while on asteroid patrol in deep space and mistake it for an actual invasion of Earth, getting themselves into one predicament after another when they land in a rural American town on Halloween night and discover how wrong they are. Very, very stupid movie - I mean truly stupid - but damned if it doesn't have me in hysterics every time I watch it (partly because- inexplicably- the personality of one of the lead Martians is based on Jack Nicholson. I kid you not, there is nothing quite as bizarre and funny as watching a strange little antennae-sporting green martian spouting the line "Space army? I'd death ray my grandmother for a space army right about now" using Jack Nicholson's style of inflection. Come to think of it, this was actually a good flick to smoke a bowl during back in the day).

The other one that comes to mind on the "to each their own" list is A Night at the Roxbury. I should hate this freaking movie..... but I love it. Aside from the Blues Brothers or Wayne's World, I've watched it more times than any other SNL related flick.  I normally can only take Chris Kattan in small doses, but I enjoyed him here and Will Ferrel was in his pre- Elf superstardom mode and wasn't just coasting yet. Any flick that features a scene where  a father's issues with his adult sons are resolved by the intervention of actor  Richard Grieco  is just  crazy cool enough to work  for me.

And GMG- yeah that joke about Sandusky was tasteless..but it was also funny.  Given that he had just about a decade of other people's silence covering his crimes, I'd say the jokes are somewhat overdue.

[GiveMeGore]

Splatt, I don't know how much you'd enjoy Smiley Face. I'm a big fan of it.....but Traum and myself are also big fans of something else....that something is pretty obvious if you read the synopsis. Not saying you'd hate it, I'm sure you'll find it funny at times but I dunno....   Curious to see your opinion if you catch it soon.

Grandmas Boy needs to be mentioned. Might be one of my all time favorites. Probably have watched it 47 times and it's not even close to being played out.....

http://www.moviewavs.com/php/sounds/?id=gog&media=WAVS&type=Movies&movie=Grandmas_Boy&quote=mynameisjp.txt&file=mynameisjp.wav

[Splatterscribe]

Splatt, I don't know how much you'd enjoy Smiley Face. I'm a big fan of it.....but Traum and myself are also big fans of something else....that something is pretty obvious if you read the synopsis. Not saying you'd hate it, I'm sure you'll find it funny at times but I dunno....   Curious to see your opinion if you catch it soon.

Reading the synopsis , Smiley Face actually sounds like a movie I'd enjoy. I used to smoke weed on a daily basis GMG, then weekly up until my early to mid thirties. I love stoner comedies..I just don't think they've been as good in recent years as they used to be. Keep in mind, I grew up with standard bearers like Fast Times, Up in Smoke, Nice Dreams and even -to a degree- Dazed and Confused. Those are hard watermarks to surpass and average stuff like Pineapple Express isn't gonna cut it.

On another note: Fortune smiles! Mere days after mentioning that I was lacking a copy of the film,  I was in Walmart (actually looking for something else) and what should I happen upon in the beloved five dollar DVD bin but Chasing Amy.  Snapped it up and watched it for the first time in a number of years yesterday (I now own the entire Smith "Askewniverse" series). It's even better now than I remembered it being and is easily Smith's most genuinely dramatic and at times emotionally raw film to watch. It's also still unbelievably funny,  as is evidenced by this, one of the best onscreen dialogue exchanges I have ever witnessed. This had to be Jason Lee's breakthrough cinema moment::


Banky Edwards (Jason Lee): (quickly sketches out an illustration of a four way road with characters at the North, South, East and West ends and a one hundred dollar bill in the center where the roads intersect) Alright, now see this? This is a four-way road, okay? And dead in the center is a crisp, new, hundred dollar bill. Now, at the end of each of these streets are four people, okay? You following?
Holden MacNeal (Ben Affleck) : Yeah.
Banky Edwards: Good. Over here, we have a male-affectionate, easy to get along with, non-political agenda lesbian. Down here, we have a man-hating, angry as fuck, agenda of rage, bitter dyke. Over here, we got Santa Claus, and up here the Easter Bunny. Which one is going to get to the hundred dollar bill first?
Holden: What is this supposed to prove?
Banky Edwards: No, I'm serious. This is a serious exercise. It's like an SAT question. Which one is going to get to the hundred dollar bill first? The male-friendly lesbian, the man-hating dyke, Santa Claus, or the Easter bunny?
Holden: The man-hating dyke.
Banky Edwards: Good. Why?
Holden: I don't know.
Banky Edwards: [shouting] Because the other three are figments of your fucking imagination!

Oh,yeah. Classic.

[GiveMeGore]

you mentioned "A Night at the Roxbury". SNL flicks are usually hit or miss. I don't remember much from NatR, so I can't comment....   but I wanted to mention the Ladies Man. Tim Meadows is a riot.

"Excuse me baby...... Could I buy you a fish sandwich?"

"Excellent.....but ah, yeah... you'll have to drive....because my car, it ah, it don't exist....yea"

[GeneralCinema]

Splatt, I don't know how much you'd enjoy Smiley Face. I'm a big fan of it.....but Traum and myself are also big fans of something else....that something is pretty obvious if you read the synopsis. Not saying you'd hate it, I'm sure you'll find it funny at times but I dunno....   Curious to see your opinion if you catch it soon.

Reading the synopsis , Smiley Face actually sounds like a movie I'd enjoy. I used to smoke weed on a daily basis GMG, then weekly up until my early to mid thirties. I love stoner comedies..I just don't think they've been as good in recent years as they used to be. Keep in mind, I grew up with standard bearers like Fast Times, Up in Smoke, Nice Dreams and even -to a degree- Dazed and Confused. Those are hard watermarks to surpass and average stuff like Pineapple Express isn't gonna cut it.

On another note: Fortune smiles! Mere days after mentioning that I was lacking a copy of the film,  I was in Walmart (actually looking for something else) and what should I happen upon in the beloved five dollar DVD bin but Chasing Amy.  Snapped it up and watched it for the first time in a number of years yesterday (I now own the entire Smith "Askewniverse" series). It's even better now than I remembered it being and is easily Smith's most genuinely dramatic and at times emotionally raw film to watch. It's also still unbelievably funny,  as is evidenced by this, one of the best onscreen dialogue exchanges I have ever witnessed. This had to be Jason Lee's breakthrough cinema moment::


Banky Edwards (Jason Lee): (quickly sketches out an illustration of a four way road with characters at the North, South, East and West ends and a one hundred dollar bill in the center where the roads intersect) Alright, now see this? This is a four-way road, okay? And dead in the center is a crisp, new, hundred dollar bill. Now, at the end of each of these streets are four people, okay? You following?
Holden MacNeal (Ben Affleck) : Yeah.
Banky Edwards: Good. Over here, we have a male-affectionate, easy to get along with, non-political agenda lesbian. Down here, we have a man-hating, angry as fuck, agenda of rage, bitter dyke. Over here, we got Santa Claus, and up here the Easter Bunny. Which one is going to get to the hundred dollar bill first?
Holden: What is this supposed to prove?
Banky Edwards: No, I'm serious. This is a serious exercise. It's like an SAT question. Which one is going to get to the hundred dollar bill first? The male-friendly lesbian, the man-hating dyke, Santa Claus, or the Easter bunny?
Holden: The man-hating dyke.
Banky Edwards: Good. Why?
Holden: I don't know.
Banky Edwards: [shouting] Because the other three are figments of your fucking imagination!

Oh,yeah. Classic.

My favorite scene is:

Hooper: Always some white boy gotta invoke the holy trilogy. Bust this: Those movies are about how the white man keeps the brother man down, even in a galaxy far, far away. Check this shit: You got cracker farm boy Luke Skywalker, Nazi poster boy, blond hair, blue eyes. And then you got Darth Vader, the blackest brother in the galaxy, Nubian god!
Banky Edwards: What's a Nubian?
Hooper: Shut the fuck up! Now... Vader, he's a spiritual brother, y'know, down with the force and all that good shit. Then this cracker, Skywalker, gets his hands on a light saber and the boy decides he's gonna run the fuckin' universe; gets a whole clan of whites together. And they go and bust up Vader's hood, the Death Star. Now what the fuck do you call that?
Banky Edwards: Intergalactic civil war?
Hooper: Gentrification! They gon' drive out the black element to make the galaxy quote, unquote, safe for white folks. And Jedi's the most insulting installment! Because Vader's beautiful black visage is sullied when he pulls off his mask to reveal a feeble, crusty, old white man! They tryin' to tell us that deep inside we all wants to be white!
Banky Edwards: Well, isn't that true?
[Hooper pulls out his gun, shoots Banky]
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[Marshal Earp]

Best exchange ever? You decide.



Dale: "The only reason you're living here is because me and my dad decided you're mom is really hot and maybe we should both bang her, and we'll put up with the retard in the mean time"

Brennan: "Who's the retard?"

Dale: "You!"

Brennan: "HEY YOU DON'T SAY THAT!"

Dale: "Shut up, you wanna wake up my dad and get me grounded?"

Brennan: "Shut up!"

Dale: "You and your mom are hillbillies. This is a house of learned doctors"

Brennan: "You're not a doctor. You're a big, fat, curly headed fuck."

LOLOL

Subjective? I don't care who you are that's funny right there




In case you care to watch the mastery in person:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lSS1MYTTKH4

[traumamama]

Speaking of Dale, how could I forget to mention one more time...

WATCH TUCKER AND DALE VS EVIL!!!

This was the funniest movie I saw all year.  I believe it's still available On Demand.

Dale: You thought I looked like some kind of freak?
Allison: We misjudged you Dale. I'm... I'm really sorry.
Dale: Don't be sorry, it's my fault. I should have known if a guy like me talked to a girl like you, somebody would end up dead.

[GiveMeGore]

Best exchange ever? You decide.
Dale: "The only reason you're living here is because me and my dad decided you're mom is really hot and maybe we should both bang her, and we'll put up with the retard in the mean time"
Brennan: "Who's the retard?"
Dale: "You!"
Brennan: "HEY YOU DON'T SAY THAT!"
Dale: "Shut up, you wanna wake up my dad and get me grounded?"
Brennan: "Shut up!"
Dale: "You and your mom are hillbillies. This is a house of learned doctors"
Brennan: "You're not a doctor. You're a big, fat, curly headed fuck."
LOLOL
Subjective? I don't care who you are that's funny right there

*whispering*  "Oh I'm a curly headed fuck?"   hahaha fucking awesome.

Alright, here's a scenario for you, Dad. Suppose Nancy sees me coming out of the shower and decides to come on to me. I'm looking good. I've got a luscious V of hair going from my chest pubes down to my ball-fro. And she takes one look at me, and she goes: 'Oh, my god. I've had the old bull, now I want the young calf.' And she grabs me by the wiener..."