Sunday, Jul 20, 2008
Maybe it's Hollywood's addiction to weak-ass formula. Maybe it's a culture-wide malaise. Maybe it's a Satanic plot. Whatever the reason, movies aren't funny any more.
Aug 8, 1996 | the problem with comedy today is that it just isn't funny. Specifically, comic movies aren't funny. Somewhere along the way, the big screen and humor came to a parting of the ways, a Martin and Lewis-like schism. Movies purporting to be of a jocular nature still abound, but face it, they're comedies the way Elizabeth Berkley is an actress. It's not that yuks have completely vanished from the cultural scene. Television still has "The Simpsons," "Seinfeld," "Dr. Katz," "Beavis and Butt-head" and "Roseanne." Literature has David Lodge, Martin Amis and Alison Baker, to name just a few. Slick magazines have Mark Leyner and Christopher Buckley.
And the movies have Pauly Shore.
Why did this happen? It may be the industry's fault: With out-of-control star salaries and obscene budgets, the studios aren't willing to take risks, so we're glutted with formula-driven moneymakers that appeal to the lowest common denominator. Or maybe the problem lies with us. The lameness of comedy could be a symptom of a cultural malaise, a weariness that accepts gags that wouldn't have made the cut on "Gilligan's Island" the same way it accepts soap opera Olympics, recreated-for-TV political conventions and the assorted other McRealities currently piling up on the streets.
The simplest explanation, however, is Satanic: It's all a plot by demonic forces to ruin our souls with anti-comedies, a kind of psychic Ebola cooked up in big pots on some back lot at Universal.
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