Got that? Not “nice comedy” but “hysterically funny”: stuff that makes you rolling on the floor laughing, possibly in a literal way. Movies that seem to you an irresistible never-ending sequence of jokes are good candidates for this thread.
It would be easy to cite most of Mel Brooks’ movies or all Monty Python movies…
…Instead I’ll cite: “Airplane!” and a scene that kills me Every. Single. Time:
And if you love the movie, you will appreciate this educational video that shows that “Airplane!” is actually an almost identical remake of “Zero Hour!”.
“Tommy Boy” is my go-to when I need a laugh or fifty. It’s too bad that “Black Sheep” was a let-down, but it has its moments. “Brain Candy” is another great one.
Hot Shots! and Hot Shots! Part Deux are great spoof movies and have lots of memories for me. I like to randomly quote from them, which I think is a sign of a good comedy. The silliness has me in fits.
I have only one question: did you actually watch them?
Of those that you cited I watched only “Weird Science”, which is hilarious, even if at times it’s not a completely faithful depiction of how scientific experiments are conducted or their results analyzed.
I could claim it. I like anything that makes me laugh but I’ll always have a preference for forms of humor that are more subtle or cerebral. That doesn’t mean that I don’t consider the entire series of “Austin Powers” a masterpiece of crass/silly comedy:
Seems funny, I’ll have a look at it!
“The Blues Brothers” is one of my favorite movies. The entire film is clearly the product of genius minds and I immediately became a huge fan of the soundtrack and of the original band (that I also saw live).
I admit I picked Meet The Spartans at random because every single scene I´ve seen from it looked awful(I´m familiar with the humor though because I had to sit through several Scary Movie films), I´ve seen very big chunks from Jack & Jill and it makes me feel real sorry for Al Pachino. I however sat through the new Ghostbusters and that´s 2 + hours of “jokey” improvised dialogue that goes absolutly nowhere that I will never get back.
Now I see what you did there.
I admit I´ve never seen the sequels(everyone seems to say they´re wildly inferior), but I´ll argue that the first one is actually a real good parody of secret agent film tropes (up there with Get Smart).
Like taking the time to moan every single henchman who dies along the way (showing them calling their wifes and family) or Dr Evil arguing with his son about why he doesn´t want to instantly just shoot them when he could. There´s lots of stuff like that, that makes at least the first one a not so dumb satire.
I really don’t understand what are the artistic reasons behind this kind of projects. When I read about “Blues Brothers 2000” I perfectly knew what kind of movie it would have been even before watching a trailer.
Globally, I agree. But the rhythm of the sequels is faster, they are even sillier and they have a few jokes that are extremely funny. The third movie “goes meta” and its beginning is completely unexpected and extremely hilarious.
I’m not posting here a video of it both because it would be a huge spoiler and because I suggest to familiarize with the entire series (and especially the style of the second movie) before that.
Since we were talking about high-brow comedy, here is a movie by the good old Woody Allen, but I’ve chosen one of his early movies that are more based on fast gags and less based on intellectual dialogues:
"NOT SAFE FOR WORK" scene in which Woody Allen buys a porn magazine
By the way, the soundtrack of “Bananas” was composed by the great Marvin Hamlisch, the author of my favorite Broadway musical: “A Chorus Line”.
“Hot Shots!” is one of the few movie series in which I prefer the sequel rather than the first movie (some other series are “Star Wars” and “Star Trek”). Part Deux is simply crazier and I love that.
If you love the humor of “Airplane!” and other movies by Zucker/Abrahams/Zucker, you will not be disappointed by “Top Secret!”, which is crazy and maybe even more surreal that the other films of the same authors:
There are none. They´re purely commercial. Ghostbusters and Blues Brothers 2000 are bad examples, but I guess some of them succeed.
The sad thing about that one is, other than Ghostbusters it was done by mostly the same people and the result was a big insult to John Belushi, even though not as big of an insult as the movie Wired (yeah look that one up if you haven´t heard of it before). I think you can blame Dan Akroyd for having the idea in both cases.
I have a very clear opinion about him. I love his whacky early 70s stuff. And Annie Hall is actually a really good film. But ever since he´s got an Oscar for that one, he´s bascially chugging out the same film over and over and over again every year (bar a few exceptions) and Woody Allen film mostly bore me these days, as they´re mostly the same, every year.
I was about to mention that one, it´s one of their best.
Not only I didn’t know the movie but I also had absolutely no idea that Bob Woodward (one of my heroes) had written a book about Belushi.
Those are his films that in my opinion can be considered strictly “comical”. They still draw on Allen’s previous stand-up comedy job and as a consequence they are mainly a sequence of funny gags. His subsequent movies were more focused on story and dialogues and, finally, his latest movies became just very light comedies.
(But if for a moment we put apart the comedy element and focus on his wider accomplishments as an author, I firmly believe that he was able to give us one of the most beautiful surreal comedies of the last decades: “Midnight in Paris”. It’s not a movie for this thread, but in my opinion it is a masterpiece.)
I would like to mention a fairly recent (if compared to the other titles cited in this thread) comedy movie that really surprised me. I laughed very hard at several of its unexpected scenes: “Scott Pilgrim vs. the World”, which you can sneak peak here in the full cinematic awesomeness of 360p:
I actually really liked that one, because it says a great deal about “nostalgia that is not even yours” or the longing for an idealized time in the distant past mostly because it is distant to your reality(which is something I instantly think about when I see a Rennaisance Faire).
Well guys, the new Ghostbusters is horrible. I couldn’t watch the entire movie. I had expectations, but the movie sucked.
Nevertheless, I must disagree regarding Blues Brothers 2000. Conversely, I watched that movie being very skeptic. But when I watched it, I liked it.
It hasn’t the magic of the first one, right. And we miss John Belushi. But, hey, John Goodman is great! And he can sing… and that kid is good, too.
But the best are the artistic shows of the great names of blues…
I mean… the movies are different: in the second one the story is much more silly, and while the first one was the expression of the “idea of Blues” of the Blues brothers, the second one is just a silly plot to justify a monster show-off of Blues legends and blues skills. You can find all the living bigs from the first movie as Aretha Frankin or James Brown, but you have also Erika Badu, Wilson Picketts, not to mention that unbelievable supergroup of the final of the battle of the bands, including Eric Clapton, B.B. King, Billy Preston, Paul Shaffer, Bo Diddley, Isaac Hayes and who knows how many others. And the final exhibition is magnificent, nothing in the first move could be compared to it.
I’m off-topic here, but if I put aside my personal opinion and focus on what has actually happened, I think it’s important to remember that aggregating a large quantity of iconic musicians wasn’t enough to:
prevent the financial poor performances of the movie
prevent most critics to state that the movie sucks
Now imagine what the results would have been without that large quantity of famous musicians. The point is: there is no good film here, it’s mainly good music.
