Comedy That Isn’t
A brief overview of failed styles
I haven’t given very much to read over the past few weeks, so here is a tribute to you, my obedient and worshipping audience, a brief dissection of the horrible world of bad comedy.
There are many comedy styles that have developed throughout the ages, most of which are specific only to the time and become redundant as time passes, however now, more than any other time frame is the day of ‘romantic comedies’, or ‘wacky comedy adventures’ or so on and so forth. Junk, all of it. You’ve seen all those shitty 80s comedies lining the back of a video store, the ones that are usually on sale for about $2 each, that’s what will become of these stupid ‘comedies’ that run rampant on the silver screen now
But it doesn’t end there, bad comedy is splattered all over the TV hiding in hi-budget shows, and often low budget shows, almost demanding you to ask, “Why don’t these idiots realise they aren’t funny?”. There are several streams of particularly bad comedy to be on the look out for:
- Impersonations - The skill of impersonating a character relies on copying and exaggurating their nuances when speaking as well as their accent, if the audience can see the impersonator it is vitally important to at least make some attempt to look like the person you are impersonating. So, putting a massive comic nose on yourself and pretending to be anyone and everyone without altering your voice or movements doesn’t really count. See “Comedy Inc” (a rather ironic title when you think about it) for the worst kind of impersonations. “Dead Ringers” manages to be the best of this style I’ve seen in some time.
- Sex jokes - A joke is a joke, some jokes about sex are incredibly funny, but mentioning a sexual act is not exactly humourous, particularly when it is done over and over again for no real reason. Of course, try telling this to the American film industry, pumping out film after film with gratutious nudity and random mentions of sex in a funny voice and they call it a comedy. Expect a lot of these gathering dust in the video stores in about 10 years time.
- Slapstick - A horrible style that is usually bad, but is occasionally done brilliantly. The worst offender of the times is Hilary Duff, who relies on randomly walking into things to make her career, so she must be eternally thankful to Buster Keaton and Charlie Chaplin. After some time though, her face is going to look ugly and she’ll start to look old, and suddenly walking into things won’t capture the limitless imagination of the American population anymore. The goodies also pioneered much of this style, some of it awful, some of it good. Thankfully this is no longer very common, but I’m sure it will make a grand comeback.
- Discomfort - Incredibly popular in films at the moment, this genre focusses on creating situations that are as embarrasing as possible for a character. Mostly, this just makes me (or the audience if I can extraploate) feel queasy, the rest of the time calls for changing channels out of boredom or irritation. The entire American Pie series seems to rely on this and sex jokes. Haha, so very funny, now please stop.
- Forced laughter - This horrible trend, most exploited in the very early 80s consists of bad actors spewing out uninteresting and predictable scripts, pausing at the end of each phrase for raucous laughter straight from the can. This is still abundant today, mostly in black comedies.
- Character assasination - The backbone of much british humour, including the sensational Blackadder series, this is another genre perverted and destroyed by the less than subtle mind of the Americans. What was once beautiful due to the intricate use of language has become scripts of boring repetitious crap. The worst offender of this crime? Hard to pick, but I’d put my money on such incredibly funny series as “Veronicas Closet” and other generic “comedies”
- Spoofs - The quoting or reproduction of another film in a witty and humourous way. Started in the mainstream by a truly amusing film called “Top Secret”, this is one of the types of comedy that almost everyone knows to avoid. Much of the humour from this style comes from subtle introduction or seamless inclusion. Unfortunately, you end up with pap like “Scary Movie” or “Another Teen Movie”, which, when you see at a store for $2 usually has blurbs like, ‘The spoof that took the world by storm! Sick of those [insert genre here]? Well this movie shows them all [generic insult here]!’. Exclamation marks seem very important in marketing these otherwise unmarketable films.
Perhaps one day the Smash-Hit Comedies!!! will stop being thrown at us from uninspired writers and we can start enjoying real humour, but until that day, try to avoid elephants and people with the name Jeroen, (this could be hard if you are in Holland).