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Film comedies have always been a problem for me, since for the most part I don't find 'em "funny." (Funny: what's that? When you laugh, I guess, though Rob Zombie movies—or Milla Jovovich in Resident Evil: Extinction ... can't hardly wait for that one!—probably don't count.) And with the recent canonization of everything Judd Apatow touches, things are looking bleaker all the time, at least from my side of the aisle. Poker-faced through The 40-Year-Old Virgin, poker-faced through Knocked Up, poker-faced through Superbad (I mean, what's with the decibel count: if the characters don't immediately turn into screaming, gesticulating ferrets, does it mean the "comedy" has somehow failed?). As desolating as it undoubtedly is, Aki Kaurismaki's Lights in the Dusk seems more chortlesome (now there's a word!) than anything Apatow et al have been able to cook up. Maybe it's the very numbness of it, like a whiff of nitrous oxide in the dentist's chair: cleaned out and bracing, daring you to find subliminal riffs in an open, airy void—what's not to like about that?
But still I'm not laughing, since that's not primarily what Kaurismaki's about ... so what does set me off comedywise? Probably a window to the soul in this—and maybe I should close it while the opportunity's still there—but so far this year it's been DeCillo's Delirious, Hartley's Fay Grim (two-thirds a white telephone movie elegantly skewed ... until the deplorable imploding finale), Maddin's Brand Upon the Brain!, Edgar Wright's Hot Fuzz, Waitress if you care to count it, then ... nada, zilch, zero. What all these personal faves ultimately share is a reliance on mise-en-scene—on spatial relations and blocking, attitudes and movement, visual filigree—rather than literally "funny" lines. Obviously not into the yackety end of things, which wretched hearing partially accounts for—but only partially, since the same division holds with subtitled movies. And I do hate stand-up, the expectation to laugh's too overbearing and brutal—no Sarah Silvermans for this guy, please.
So what's the "best" comedy in the last five years? My own vote goes to—whoa, credibility alert!—Catherine Breillat's Sex Is Comedy (2002) ... which hardly seems anyone else's idea of a good time at all. Except for me it's almost a "been there, saw that" kind of deal—just a typewriter-wielding factotum at the derriere end of the trade (apologies for the imagery)—and, my god, she's got it all down cold: yes, they do actually debate which body parts to crop out of the frame and which photogs do or don't know how to shoot breasts and schlongs, etc. It's also extremely perceptive in what it emotionally deconstructs and clarifies ... maybe even too much so. You wonder how anyone with Breillat's kind of knowledge (or for that matter Anne Parillaud's, her alter ego in the film) can sustain a "romantic" relation at all. Or maybe she doesn't: insight as the ultimate incapacitator, a life beyond all fantasy ... but who's in a position to say?
Oh, and I just saw Sex is Comedy on IFC the other day... yeah, that was a real yuk-fest. I agree with Brad. "Irreversible" was much funnier.
(kidding... sort of)
MATT--puke blood? ... still more proof that comedy is PAIN!!!
Thank You For Smoking made me laugh. But, then, so did Road Trip, and Barry Lyndon and Gummo.
HOMO SUPERIOR--pretty much agree w/you on ROAD TRIP; i've been to bratislava ... almost
IRA--obviously i'd LOVE to list lots and lots of stuff, but here's the problem: some of my favorite "comedy" bits aren't even in comedies--e.g., at least half a dozen in renoir's GRAND ILLUSION alone (e.g., roll call in POW transfer camp: guard--"boeldieu!"; boeldieu--"cap-TAIN de boeldieu!" ... delicious, that standing on ceremony--military, aristocratic, etc--in absurd circumstance), which is more than in all the works of apatow combined, but why reduce to "comedy" when it's doing so much else? * still, as an appetizer, here's a handful i'll always cherish (i think): THE AWFUL TRUTH (mccarey/1937), LOVE ME TONIGHT (mamoulian/1932), BEDAZZLED (donen/1968), PASTORALE (iosseliani/1979), REAL LIFE (brooks/1979), SWEET DREAMS (moretti/1982), SITTING DUCKS (jaglom/1983), IT'S A GIFT (taurog/1934) ... not to mention walsh's THE HORN BLOWS AT MIDNIGHT (in spite of the star's publicly slagging it forever), the horn-factory opener in douglas's SAPS AT SEA (must have a thing about horns ...), ABBOTT AND COSTELLO MEET [fill in the blanks], and a variety three stooges shorts, but only the ones with curly in 'em--nyuk, nyuk, nyuk ...
but perhaps that's the problem with genre criticism. if you say a comedy fails, then you're in turn stating that anyone that laughs at is is perhaps a failure. i don't like the 'saw' films, and cringe whenever someone recommends them to me.
but i'm not too sure why you're complaining. you list a good set of films you find funny - you only seem to deride three apatow films, in comparison to the examples you give at the close of your comment. would that not suggest that there are perhaps more instances of 'your comedy' than 'our comedy'?
READER--re "now there's a word!" ... umm, sorry, it's not
Why must your blogs be so muddled? It's bad enough we continue to get your pseudo intellectual posturing on all the obscure films you enjoy that nobody else does...just take a step back, slow down and re-type your posts. It's no wonder they won't let you write reviews the way you muddle your blogs.
They're not anywhere near perfect, but the inner workings of a Judd Apatow coming-of-age picture might actually be too subtle for today's film critics if they think that the main reaction they're being asked to have is to "laugh" (and/or get a little misty-eyed at the end). Unfortunately, Pat G.'s commentary here is probably a good example of how the "codes" of criticism for various kinds of movies sometimes break down when non-festival, mainstream genre filmmaking makes an attempt to elicit slightly more complicated reactions in the audience besides the usual "guffaw".
First of all, I agree, Pat G's language is always cringe-inducing. He uses fanciful, muddled verbiage to mask the fact that he isn't saying much. After you read a few senteces in and understand his subject than he's forced to confessing talking about, you're forced to re-read, and then you realize Lucas isn't saying much. (Characteric example: Instead of writing "Don't you agree? "He writes "You agree, oui?" That about spells it out for you. That being said, I agree with him that contemporary comedies stink.
2 comedies that made me laugh a bundle" Milos Forman's "The Fireman's Ball" and "Goodfellas".
Yes, I think "Goodfellas" is hysterical. If it is to be considered a truly great movie, it must be under the presumption that is a gangter comedy. Ray Liotta's Skeletor laugh -
Nevertheless, I can't help but agree with
I'm not offended as a feminist, I'm offended as a person who likes comedy. As for wasting my time, I see that you've made 4 posts in two hours, 3 of which add nothing to the conversation. Glass houses, buddy. If you're gonna be inebriated then there has to be some cooler shit you can do besides reading blogs you don't like.
Pat --
Re "complexity", Apatow strikes me as fairly simple but if most of the nation's critics insist on reducing him to funny ha ha (and yet still being able to ferret out the subtleties of, say, "Funny Ha Ha") then he must be the fucking David Lynch of dick joke movies.
In any case, Apatow doesn't have much of a visual style to speak of so that's not really what appeals to me. I like that fact I find Apatow to be one of the most anti-chauvinistic, even anti-patriarchal writer/directors I've yet encountered. His focus is not on women, sure, but in the nerd trilogy his focus is on the extent to which men are also victimized by patriarchal notions of gender roles simply because they're surrounded by people and a general culture that allows, even condones their tendency to be stupid, macho assholes who don't know how to communicate their feelings and, in the name of the general "liberalization" of social etiquette makes them completely unconcerned with women's POVs. In this case, the most graphic moments are probably not meant to actually be funny, in case you didn't get that. There's a point where Apatow crosses the line, and if his intentions are murky to other people, for me they're crystal clear -- it's the violence inherent in the system that gives sanction to such behavior, and Apatow makes it sound appropriately painful even if in the context of something being sold as a "comedy" it also makes people laugh rather uncomfortably. Also, in their own crude way, the movies are making the point that men are concerned with many of the same things with which women are concerned in these "sitcom-worthy contrivances" (aka standard rom com tropes that have been told mostly from the POV of women). IMO that is radical mainstream entertainment in an age when what passes for feminism is Carrie Bradshaw & co haranguing about commitment.
In this case, Apatow's writing more than his direction that carries the day. When Leslie Mann's character starts going postal in front of the night club bouncer, she's speaking about the fetishizing of youth and the extent to which it inadvertently leads to the devaluing of motherhood and age, two things over which her character has been agonizing for the entire movie. When Steve Carell's Andy accompanies the teenage daughter to a safe sex counseling meeting and he meets a group of teenagers with overly developed sex lives and limited judgment, we see where the origins of his work crews' attitude to sex may begin. But Apatow doesn't stop there. When Andy starts to have serious questions regarding his own virginity, even the adults join in ridiculing him, thus making a small comment on the extent to which the presence of sex is such a given that you're considered freakish if you're not participating. This, in the end recalls the "drama" or farce of the teenage daughter's insistence on having sex ASAP, her own mother's accidental pregnancy and the extent to which Andy might actually be the most mature out of everyone simply because he refuses to be rushed.
Now, to do all this without resorting to Lifetime original movie mawkishness or worse, Bill Bennett's Book of Virtue-isms is striking to me. Because it's a hard balance. Sometimes he tips too much on the side of crude and overcompensates with sugary endings. But there are so many points in the middle that he does get it right. It's the kind of thing where it looks easy when done well but is easily forgotten when not, as evidenced by any Farrelly Bros. movie that isn't There's Something About Mary, much of Ben Stiller's oeuvre, or Wedding Crashers. I appreciate that skill of balancing tones, both (gross) comedic and melodramatic, along with a subtle side of social commentary. This may be too little compensation for your art house tastes, but it makes Apatow fascinating for me.
unfortunately can't join you in your main line of argument, since even if everything you say is true, the end result is still pretty much watered down--maybe there's a "benign" (or at least socially innocuous) outcome, maybe there isn't ... * but since i can't be spokesman for positions i don't find consequential (not that my own are, but they are in fact the ones that engage/enchant me most), i can only applaud people like yourself (no, i'm not being sarcastic) who argue fervently and, yes, intelligently in support of the films that move and excite them * wish there were more who'd do the same, connecting these outcast genres to the culture of articulation--except i can't help wondering if there's not a kind of missionary impulse beneath it: "good" for you presumably benighted folks who, by your own estimate, "need" it ... but what does this have to do with you?
but yeah, as a highly manipulative form of PC castor oil ("a spoonful of invective helps the medicine ...," etc), apatow's stuff does go down easy
I don't do this because I think anyone "needs" to hear anything in particular from me. I don't hang out on blogs on a regular basis, and I post even less, though I like reading them from time to time. When I do post, it's mostly out of exasperation. In this case, I'm tired of overly simplistic summations of the Apatow bandwagon and sickened by the politics-baiting that they incurred this summer. (BTW, your implicit dismissal of my opinion by using the words "highly manipulative ... PC castor oil" seems rather disingenuous considering your complaints re Knocked Up. But never mind.)
I wrote "art house" specifically because the language of your original post is probably evidence of the worst impulses that such a knee-jerk categorization implies. Mainly that you find little filmic value to the "yackety yaks" and the "screaming, gesticulating" ferrety laffers that "rely on funny lines" and stand-up comics but somehow find "chortlesomeness" in a director whose subject matter would probably be subject to accusations of exploitation if she wasn't, you know, French. What would you have done with directors like Lubitsch and Sturges in their day? Yackety yaks and one-liners all ...
But I realize that's a low blow. What if I used the language that you use, but to defend Apatow? "Maybe it's the very numbness of it, like a whiff of nitrous oxide in the dentist's chair: cleaned out and bracing, daring you to find subliminal riffs in an open, airy void—". Because oddly enough, it's fairly accurate set of terms for my feelings when I see certain scenes and hear certain lines. The giant box of porn in 40YOV is a void, filled with loneliness, exploitation, degradation both physical and emotional; the scene where they lock him up with the giant-screen porn is similar. Watching Leslie Mann's Debbie eviscerate Paul Rudd's Pete for not giving a shit about their children's safety is bracing, because it refuses to cover up the nastiness inherent in male-female relationships with a veil of "complicated, adult maturity". Apatow's work is difficult to hear sometimes, not afraid to show people being callous and mean and shallow and yet have the audaciousness to argue that these are not abnormally dysfunctional people, that real people who are perfectly nice otherwise can be this consistently nasty and immature. And it's from the mise-en-scene of constant, mind-numbing frustration and filthy talk that he's trying to navigate what it means to be fundamentally decent in this day and age. IMO that is the most fascinating thing about his work, regardless of how successful he is at the end of his career.
regardless of how successful he is at the end of his career at achieving the clarity of purpose that would indicate a truly "great" director.
Pat, seriously, quit trolling. You were howling all the way through Caddyshack.
Pat: Did you search for my nick or something? wow, cool, but spooky.
still, i like reading your stuff.