Transcript for:
State of Modern Comedy Films

how many times have you logged on to your favorite streaming service in the mood for a little giggle you turn to the comedy section ready to find a funny movie you might not have seen before just to have a light-hearted time and what do you find oh it's Adam Sandler on an island again doing stuff oh another terrible remake of an old classic a bunch of random romcoms you have no interest in watching kids movies that get shoved under the comedy umbrella and I'm not talking about Shrek 2 that's a good movie so you end up watching a classic from 30 years ago despite OJ Simpson being in it hi I'm Gabby and welcome back to the channel this is an intro I don't know I felt like I should start introducing myself even though I never do so now I just made it weird I it's fine you can call me Vector for all I care after looking at every streaming service I could get my little handson or free trial because that gets more expensive than cable real fast and examining all the comedy movies that streaming had to offer I can now categorize the comedy movie category into a few set categories how many times did I say category it seems that every comedy section consists of mostly movies for kids romcoms holiday movies Kevin Hart Adam Sandler dramedies or Classics from 10 plus years ago like so much of this section aren't even comedy movies besides the children's movies holiday films and romcoms do the rest of the comedies that have come out in the past 5 years really stand on their own at all all or even considered good you can tell we're lacking in good comedies when the only dedicated comedy movies on streaming services are more than a decade old when genres like action or drama have nothing short of exceptional recent films is JLo's biography really a comedy saltburn a comedy come on now once upon a time in Hollywood that's just I don't know if this has happened to anyone else but half the time when I'm looking for a new comedy to watch I'll choose a movie start watching it only to realize it's not not a [ __ ] comedy It's a drama with two jokes in it that got lost in the comedy section and I'm not talking about black comedies here I'm talking about movies like don't look up that were so godamn boring that I think it forgot it was supposed to be funny how big is this thing though I can't destroy my ex-wife's house is that possible there's a 100% chance that we're all going to die oh brother this guy stinks and I'm not against genre Fusion I think action comedies are like bread and butter horror comedies are like peanut butter and jam but traditional comedies lately have taken a huge hit I mean bigname movies have just been absolutely flopping the wrong Missy was really meh old dad's was a really mixed movie just rub some dirt on it you might want to put a little neopor on her I think you get infected oh yeah you a doctor you just like one of those WebMD guys this is common knowledge you want to keep the cut clean well listen I'm trying to raise a little man here not a [ __ ] [ __ ] so why don't you just go on Twitter and go share this story with you're the hero you people was a really tired bad it was just people just thought it was bad no hard feelings was also mixed people thought it was really creepy that Jennifer Lawrence's character was like 30 and she was being paid to date an 18-year-old people felt it was less funny and more [ __ ] weird although I ended up scrolling so far down that I ended up on Michael Bolton's big sexy Valentine's Day special so I'll have to take a look at that later I mean you know the comedy section is lit when you see tall girl one and two on there not to mention he's all that the worst brand placement sequel to She's All That thank God we have that mean girls the worst seventh sequel to Mean Girls White Men Can't Jump with Jack harlo the worst sequel to White Men Can't Jump without Jack harlo just so we're clear transparent not opaque good comedy still exist and are still being made I'm not the almighty judge of good comedy but it's pretty obvious when it's bad even if you can't put a finger on it I know that much in the past five or so years I thought free guy was fun bad trip was a hilarious Borat style hidden camera type comedy the Weird Al satire movie 80 for Brady the movie about old ladies getting into hij Jinks to see Tom Brady at the Super Bowl so they see ghostly visions of him giving pep talks to them the cult classic with just me in it I'm the cult there are good comedies being made I just feel like few of them actually make it into the mainstream pop culture for being well- written and good Barbie is one of them in a time where I feel like cult classic comedies were a Stones throw away in like the early 2000s my personal observation as a casual movie Watcher is that classic comedies have kind of fallen out of mainstream whether that be us falling out of love with the genre Studios not investing in the genre or a mix of both and I'm not the first or only one to notice this an article on the LA Times says that at a time when comedy is enjoying a boom on the small screen and streaming standup comedy is easier than ever the genre can't seem to shake a big screen slump and this is showing evidently in the box office too in favor of artsy dramedies that kind of lean more on the side of drama than comedy or um Adam Sandler Kevin Hart and The Rock and like John Cena starring in these incredibly generic forgettable comedies there's nothing wrong with a good dramedy but when a horro film like parasite is being considered a comedy by articles Google the Oscars and streaming services because it has like two kind of light-hearted moments in it it doesn't quite feel like it makes sense here we'll talk more about that later but first I want to talk about the current state of comedy films but first first I wanted to address something and that's that you can't pay to see my feet but bombas can the most comfortable socks slippers shirts underwear that you 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best friend Mark stay prayed up Walberg stay prayed up stay prayed up stay prayed up Kevin Hart's movie family is going on vacation or something so he finally gets a little bit of me time for himself because he's always so busy doing everything while his wife works a traditional job Mark Wahlberg's Shenanigans have no Arc or Reason and he doesn't grow as a character at all and many of the scenes just aren't funny or well thought out to what's actually funny about it besides yelling help help help at the end Kevin admits to being super microman Agy in this hard to watch emotional monologue where he just Saves the Day by doing standup I hope he didn't use it again but if he did he ate ass and guess what instead of resolving themes that were set up like gender roles work around the house and how tired he's been son you have no life outside of your kids well my wife is an architect we made a decision as best for me to take care of the kids it's called a system which works yeah prison system that's what it sounds like which you can resolve comically as well he only addresses the micromanaging his kids dreams thing which was not really set up as the main issue in the beginning the ending speech and resolution with his wife was confusing underwhelming and could have been put together a lot more cohesively because every sentimental scene that they tried to tie in here just felt really discombobulated and out of place bad mom's Christmas might be the unfunniest piece of media I've seen in a long time that was actually trying to be a comedy and I love bad movies but this wasn't enjoyable bad this was boring bad maybe the fact that it's a Christmas movie automatically bestows a bad movie Curse onto it who knows for sure it again follows people who haven't had a day off in a long time and all of their mother-in-laws unexpectedly fly in for Christmas at first I thought this was labeled wrong on Netflix because I was confused on whether or not this movie was trying to be funny the jokes feel dated in the worst way all the scenes are shot the same the scenes linger far past their welcome because the pacing of every joke in scene was so frustrating that I wanted to turn it off several times throughout because the entire movie is spent waiting for the part where they become bad moms but it never happens it struggles to fill the 100 minute runtime it devolves into cheap emotional fodder that feels empty and not earned because it was so un funny leading up to it this movie was so disappointing to me because all of the actresses in this movie have really solid comedy credentials but with material this bad to work with no one could save this mess girls trip is again people who haven't had a day off in a long time and have drifted apart getting back together to make one of their work trips to New Orleans a girls trip this was definitely the better one on this list the characters felt a bit more real Tiffany hadish is one of the funniest parts of this movie it's a hangover style run comedy but they tried to weave in this super serious story line about one of the girls husbands cheating on her and in this runchy comedy it really took me out of it it almost felt like emotional Whiplash cuz it was trying to be this super sentimental movie with serious moments and serious themes while still being a runchy comedy Palm Springs was an interesting take on the Groundhog Day stuck in a Time Loop situation Andy samberg's been stuck on someone's wedding day for quite a while now and this girl follows him into the time voice Vortex and now she's stuck in the time loop with him I like the Twist and concept however they were trying to go for dramedy but it left me feeling lacking in the drama and the comedy aspects of the film they try to touch on nihilism and living every day in a Time Loop and the existential crisis that come with it while also trying to have gut busting comedy moments that just end up making me eye roll because the time loop life metaphor is not only done worse than a movie like groundhog day but they lay it out and explain it to you over and over and over again without letting us interpret the story I get it oh we're stuck in a Time loop it's a metaphor for everyday life don't you think this is crazy it's almost like nothing matters in the end they reiterate that point to ad nauseum pain is real why can't you understand that it doesn't matter nothing matters right those are your words no pain matters what we do to other people matters being a source of Terror is not fun okay it's not fulfilling I know this from experience it doesn't matter that everything resets and people don't remember we remember we have to deal with the things that we do oh my God I'm just kidding there is no God are you scared to leave what no I just don't want to leave I can't keep waking up in here it's all meaningless right I mean I hope it's not all meaningless today tomorrow yesterday it's all the same the only way to really live in this is to embrace the fact that nothing matters well then what's the point of living well we kind of have no choice but to live so I think your best bet is just to learn how to suffer existence at the end of the the story the girl is like randomly good at quantum physics and they blow up the time Vortex and that's how they get out of it straight up losing any sort of deep meaning that the movie was trying to have especially when they throw in half-baked sentimental moments that have no real leadup consequences that make the film feel messy instead of striving for a purpose so it just spells out the message for you instead it's not the fact that the moment is serious but the fact that it's spelled out a little too much which is something I've grown to loathe in these modern comedies I feel like many modern comedies fail to strike that balance between comedy and serious writing that it ends up losing its identity of what it's trying to be as a film when it's trying to do too much because they think that these like shoed in serious moments make the movie better more credible or substantial or something it really takes you out of the crazy world that these movies have built when they try to sit there and explain the message to you out loud hey guys cheating is bad and we're going to explain why hey guys I must let my kid follow his dreams actually nothing matters which is why that this time Loop is a metaphor for exactly that even movies like super bad is about something a little more than just teen comedy it's a critique of things that teenage boys chase after and idolize that are typically fruitless without shoving the message down our throats with some out ofpl serious PSA monologuing which is something that's evident in the shift away from traditional comedy into drama action and Spectacles on the big screen I think it's less that audiences don't want to see comedy in a theater and more that they do want to see a spectacle in the theater TV is so good at providing drama and comedy that the movie theater is becoming one of the only places you can see things on a grand stage the director for Deadpool and Zombie Land said in an interview with the LA Times it's sort of a chicken in the egg situation because if less people are going to see comedies and theaters do Studios intertwine drama to try to real people back in or are these poorly written plots causing people to stray away from the genre the state of new comedies have just been taken over by storylines happening to bigname celebrity where that's almost the spectacle of the movie instead of them embodying a character moving through a story like oh look it's the rock being the rock again in every movie I couldn't name a single character name that he's had in any movie SNL members and other Giants in comedy taking over Decades of films is not new to the genre of Comedy the genre has been personality cult based forever faces you wouldn't stop seeing for 10 20 years straight so it should be fine that something similar is happening now with familiar faces if the movies weren't just mid or Worse completely forgettable something about them have just lost their spark to me I feel like a lot of these new comedies have lost their passion for for comedy writing the Ness it almost feels very corporate and laid out at times they fall flat on safe predictable dialogue generic plots tropes characters and generally feel uninspired and canned you can take a predictable plot like nerds try to do something before they graduate that's been done a million times and still have the jokes land and be an enjoyable film because of the cinematography setups payoffs writing and really good performances from the actors when it can be really easy to just overact and resort to yelling as the joke which can be funny at the right time the periodic air pockets we encountered there's no reason to become alarmed and we hope you enjoy the rest of your flight by the way is there anyone on board who knows how to fly a [Applause] plane but someone's performance of a joke or scene has to be just right if not the whole thing falls apart even if you have good everything else if anything in the chain is just off or wrong then it all falls apart which is why I think doing comedy is so difficult and not as effortless as it [Music] seems great comedy looks effortless but it's probably the hardest genre from a filmmaking standpoint the currency of these movies is not the budget or the special effects the currency is the comedy and if the comedy isn't there it erodes the Goodwill of the audiences which just sends them right back to the small screen where they have so many options says senior box office analyst for com score in an interview with the LA Times like in standup when it's bad boy is it bad all of the eyes are on the writing the performance and the joke I was talking to a friend who I think is a really good comic and it can take people like up to half a decade to write a really good standup set with all the revisions and versions it goes through to be the the funniest it can be a wonderful example of nothing working from script to screen is MGK's Stoner comedy I reviewed that movie 2 years ago and I will not let it go we had plenty of joke ideas but the execution overall was terrible from script to editing and performance take this scene for example that is a classic slapstick style misunderstanding my phone's dead [ __ ] do you have a charger uh yeah there's one in the glove compartment [Music] so lot of gloves well yeah silly it's the glove compartment right there aren't strict rules for comedy that always have to be followed but this scene specifically had a lot of pacing issues I felt like the shot held on for too long pensive music that could have been done without to really let the moment moment linger they spoiled the joke by showing us the glove reveal right away and they could have played around with different types of reactions compare it to this scene from Napoleon Dynamite are you going to eat your tots no can I have them the delivery is believable the way he grabs the tots on the table is funny but then it cuts to him unzipping his pocket and trying to shove them all in there with one falling out cutting to Pedro's perfect blank reaction there's a lot of little things working together to make this scene funny including the camera work and the editing when it could have easily relied on the whole joke being oh he grabbed some tater tots funny and shoved in his pocket how weird is that without showing us any of the things that they did the few movies I mentioned obviously aren't representative of the entire comedy genre right now but unfortunately they are kind of Representative of mainstream comedy films right now because these are the movies being shown to the Casual movie enjoyer it's really hard for me to verbalize exactly why I feel this way about a lot of these movies I don't know if I just don't love the acting if my sense of humor doesn't align with current trends because I I literally find this funny or if it's a mix of generally everything or if I'm just not the target audience which could definitely be the case because I don't mean to come in here with rose tinted glasses and be like old comedy is good new comedy is bad because the classics we remember are the best ones from that era when not all of them hit and not all of them were my taste for example I don't love Adam Sandler or will Ferell movies even the classics and dude wears my C is a terrible Stoner comedy that I didn't find very funny despite how popular it is some of my least favorite comedies include the [ __ ] stain that is sausage party and even beloved actors like Mike Myers that have made comedy Classics have made widely regarded unfunny films I just feel like we have less of those comedies that I really see sticking around to be Classics in the [Music] future each decade had its classic comedies the' 70s 80s '90s and early 2000s had a really healthy handful of quality comedy Classics that people still quote and remember fondly today none of them won Oscars but the cultural impact that these movies had is nothing to laugh at or everything to laugh at if you know what I mean I just find myself going back to the old classics or discovering new old ones that I haven't seen yet this wasn't always the case but in the past 10 years or so why do com comies need to be intertwined with like 50% drama in order for it to be critically acclaimed can the comedy not stand on its own can the comedy not stand by itself with its own two legs I got curious about this so I looked further into the end all be all the Arbiter of Truth in film Artistry and that's the Oscars I don't care about the Oscars I know a lot of you don't either but it was really telling when I looked into what the last comedy film was to win an Oscar for best picture and they showed movies that were straight up not comedies number one on the list was parasite it's a great movie and many say deserved to win best picture especially a foreign film finally getting the recognition and representation it deserves but it's not a comedy it's just not all the comedies that have ever won best picture are from like the 1930s to 1960s a couple of them were musicals and the other ones were Forest Gump and everything everywhere all at once which are not really comedies just because a movie has a few ComEd moments in it does it really count as a comedy film I'm not going to sit here and lay out like the Miriam Webster Oxford definition of what a comedy film is but you you can kind of just like tell either way this makes it feel like for a comedy film to be highly regarded even in pop culture it has to be paired with quality drama Moody lights artsy cinematography and just about everything else that isn't focused on the comedy movies like Mean Girls White Chicks 13 Going on 30 Freaky Friday Legally Blonde super bad Groundhog Day Etc relies on good comedic storytelling with dramatic moments to help realize the purpose of the story but the film relies on Comedy and is consistent throughout I'm not saying a movie has to have zero low or unfunny moments in order to count as a comedy but many recent comedy films are now the other way around it's a drama film with moments of Comedy that's just best picture but there have been comedic performances that have won Oscars none from the past two decades though besides Melissa McCarthy's performance in the 2011 film bridesmaids listen I know Oscars literally don't mean [ __ ] I'm not letting the academy decide what movies everyone thinks is good they won't even show their faces but it does seem like a common sentiment across what we consider to be exceptional media we all know and are familiar with acting that is passionate dramatic Moody angry that make us go wow what passion holy cow he's acting yep that's acting all right and we've all learned to appreciate the small subtle moments of great acting like subtle facial expressions and body language that really sell a performance but what about comedy acting it's really easy to gloss Over comedic acting because actors who are good at it make it look so effortless we often gloss over it in hindsight being a great comedic actor in my opinion takes just as much skill and talent as any other type of acting but I feel it doesn't get the same appreci ation all the time or maybe it does I don't know like any genre when the acting is bad the entire film can lose momentum and really take you out of it even if everything else is on point well it is unfortunate unfortunate my ex-husband's hiking accident was unfortunate and he was mauled by bears yes girl give us nothing I love it it can struggle to convey the proper mood and implications of the scene and in traditional comedy films where the entire focus is on the jokes when the joke Falls flat there might not be much else for the film to stand on which is why I think it can be so hard the delivery of a joke or punchline can make or break the scene and that's only if the comedy writing is good too which hasn't had the best reputation this scene will live in my brain forever was there anything off between him and Luigi oh yes I I hate for it to come out like this but Luigi was asleeping with Princess Peach Mario's one the last appreciation posts I've seen for comedy acting come in the form of the office YouTube compilations Reminiscing on perfect casting choices worshiping this TV show so much that it's become a stereotype for cringe Millennial core in the same vein as DieHard Harry Potter fans but I don't care it's a good show but it's crazy how you can have different actors deliver the same exact joke in the same exact setting and it will just hit completely differently so it's crazy how something like a casting choice can affect the character the delivery the lines so much but I'm getting off topic here because we're talking about movies we all know exceptional cinematography when we see it with meaningful lighting angles shots that present an unspoken mood or dynamic but where's the credit for good comedic cinematography that can really help to exemplify or support a joke or sometimes the way the shot is set up is the joke going to work cannot do Tuesday Sean Sean Sean Sean see how that is director K Canon said it's harder to make comedies good because audiences are so Savvy and they've seen a lot you can have a horror movie that's just okay and people will go see it because scaring someone is easier than making them laugh a comedy has to be great and this is the case with movies in general right audiences find out lightning fast now if a movie sucks and the box office will suffer from that a movie has to be really good for people to go see it maybe the environment has changed where crappy comedies can't trick you into coming anymore because you'll find out too fast on Twitter but when someone makes an amazing movie people tend to go especially with so much other available quality entertainment out there many doing comedy better it's probably harder now than it was back then there are so many star studded flops these days that I'm convinced Studios think the star power will bring in the dollars alone which is partially probably why traditional comedies just go straight to streaming now to avoid the box office flop entirely so it's not that deep but let's explore this as if it is the decline line of traditional comedies being made and the rise in dramedies that explore deeper themes is not out of nowhere as some philosopher probably said at some point art reflects Society art reflects what's going on in society because art is created by Society wow that's so deep if traditional comedies aren't being made as much that must partially mean that the masses might not be as interested in them anymore maybe in favor of other types of media I think if we Circle back and look at the bigger picture wide in the lens zoom out we can start to understand the context in which our favorite movies were being made largely a time before the Boom in social media a time where we didn't have immediate access to the worst news imaginable people could shelter themselves more from what was really going on in the world and comedy films could be a light-hearted diversion from reality but now we can no longer Escape reality as it follows us everywhere we go so we blend these genres that help us find humor and complex or darker themes that help us navigate and explore how we feel people now crave stories that reflect our complex World finding solace in movies that mirror our own struggle there's always been comedy in dark situations there's just this different gapos of comedy and drama that's reflected in our media or maybe they just need to start writing better comedies I'd still like that that would be great I'm not trying to make comedy movies seem like a super deep and serious contentious topic when it's really probably not that deep but I just wanted to appreciate my favorite movie genre ever I've seen more comedy films than any other type of film I am always looking for a comedy to watch and this is just something that I've noticed and if you're about to tell me how terrible my view on movies is uh don't worry all of my friends and loved ones have already done that I'm aware I have a terrible taste in film I watch movies to escape the terrible realities of the world not to live first they're in them I don't need a movie to make me cry I can do that on my own anyway all that to say shk 2 is the best movie of all time thank you