Funny Movies

Classic Comedic Moments In Funny Movies

Comedy is one of the hardest things to do and do well in the movie business. Watching a bad comedy can be more painful than watching a bad horror movie or a bad drama. In comedy, if it isn't firing on all cylinders, it isn't working at all. When it does work, however, magic happens. We tend to remember our favorite scenes from funny movies for the rest of our lives because they make us laugh so much. Who can forget Cameron Diaz sitting at dinner with Ben Stiller in There's Something About Mary with her hair sticking straight up? That itself is not funny, but if you've seen the movie and know why her hair is standing up, you can't help but laugh. We get similar reactions from Alex Karras punching out the horse in Blazing Saddles, Gene Wilder exclaiming "What knockers!" in Young Frankenstein, and Julie Haggarty "inflating" Otto, the auto pilot, in Airplane!

Different Comedic Strokes For Different Folks

One of the things that makes good comedy so hard to do is that not everyone finds the same things to be amusing. Dudley Moore got lots of laughs and rave reviews as Arthur, but it's likely that there were some spouses or family members of alcoholics who weren't amused by the Englishman's drunken antics. There is a saying which states something is about as "funny as a rubber crutch" - meaning that the thing is not funny at all, but there are probably plenty of people who would find a rubber crutch pretty gosh darn amusing. Because of these differences in the way people see things, different forms of comedy have evolved.

Slapstick

Slapstick comedy is always physical. From the pratfalls of Chevy Chase to the antics of the Three Stooges to the madcap events in the life of Lucy Ricardo (Lucille Ball), slapstick comedy makes people laugh by showing us the misfortune of others or by simply being silly in an over the top sort of way. Prime examples of slapstick comedy in funny movies include the closing scenes of Blazing Saddles, most of the early work of Woody Allen, and old classics with the Three Stooges and the Keystone Cops.

Black Comedy

Black Comedy is when we laugh at things that really shouldn't be funny. Jokes and bits that deal with death, nuclear war, political assassinations, and other usually bleak topics define black comedy, and it is one of the more difficult types of comedy to write and perform. A horse dying of a sudden heart attack is not so funny to think about, but when it happened in John Landis' classic Animal House, it was met with an uproarious amount of laughter. Some examples of black comedy done well are:

• Harold and Maude, a story of a young man (Bud Cort) who is obsessed with death until he falls in love with a woman (Ruth Gordon) who is some fifty plus years older than him
• Eating Raoul, which features a couple who kill swingers and rob them
• Heathers, a story about two teens (Christian Slater and Winnona Ryder} who murder a number of the popular kids in their high school and make it look like they committed suicide

All of the storylines seem bleak and horrible, but all made for absolutely hilarious movies.

Highbrow Comedy

Sometimes it feels good to get jokes that other people don't get. Comedian Dennis Miller has made a career of making jokes that fly right over the heads of the majority of those who hear them. When you're one of the people who understands a reference, such as "the security guard at the airport has the attention span of Boo Radley," you tend to feel a little superior to those that don't. Examples of this include several of Woody Allen's later films, much of the work of Monty Python (especially those bits which deal with European philosophers), and some of the work of David Lynch (his films are not comedies per se, but contain some very funny stuff for those who get the jokes).

Satire

Satire, by definition, is comedy that makes fun of something. In most cases, we see it used politically, but it turns up in a lot of places. Excellent examples of satire include Robert Altman's films (especially M*A*S*H*, The Player, and Ready to Wear) "mockumentaries" like This is Spinal Tap and Best in Show, and funny movies like Airplane! and Scary Movie.