Movie Comedy at a Premium (Essay)

How much do we laugh when we attend the movies?  We cry at sad or tragic moments, we tense up in action scenes, we kind of hold our breath at suspenseful points – we are entertained, that is absorbed, in one manner or another (or we are not), but how much pure, consuming  laughter do we experience?   In the vast majority of theatrical motion pictures we can always find something, somewhere in the incidental fabric of the storyline, to provoke at least a chuckle or two, if not a sage moment of comedic insight.  Laughs of various sizes are scattered around in screenplays the way most of us anoint our tastiest meals with salt and pepper.  But those condiments are not the substance of the food.  They only flavor it, freshen it, spice it up, maybe to some extent enliven otherwise dull taste buds.  But how many essentially funny pictures ever get made – essentially funny, not just incidentally so?  When we speak of a movie comedy, we are actually speaking of a relative rarity.

You may have noticed that when awards time rolls around the nominee list is never dominated by comedies.  You are amazed if a quarter of them fit that bill.  The dramatic films dominate.  This year’s Oscar contenders for Best Picture, nine in number, are typical in this respect.  As of this writing I have not seen most of them, but from what has been written about their content, the only one that sounds as if it could be largely comedic is “Silver Linings Playbook.”  And even in this case the characters are far from traditionally sympathetic.  Both the leads are whacked out, unstable and bordering on dangerous.  You look long and hard for dominant humor in “Lincoln,” “Les Miserables,” or “Zero Dark Thirty.”  Good movie comedy is at a premium, and there is a plausible, pointed reason for this paucity: They are much harder to make. 

Yes, they are much harder to make!

And that is because the human comedy is harder to underscore.  The complicating thing is that we are all a part of it.  It is like trying to view the contour of earth from the ground on which we rest our feet.  How do we get above the melee and see ourselves from another perspective?  Where is the humor in our ever so ordinary lives?  It is no easy trick. 

A good movie comedy is more than a bag of jokes or one-liners.  It is more than a contrived gag or two or three. . .  It is the use of the camera and profound writing and the craft of the medium to trace the arc of the absurd in imaginative human behavior and practice and (here comes the make-or-break part) visualize it.  So much has to be exact and very right to make such a thing work.  In drama, especially melodrama, you can cheat and pad and pander and get away with so much more pretentiousness.  Drama is more sensational, and do we not all love the sensational?  We also love sitting with our mouths wide open with tense expectation.  But the parameters of excellent comedy are much tighter.   

By my personal standard of judgment, for a movie to be classified as essentially, not just incidentally, comedy, the premise itself has to be funny or at least highly suggestive of funny.  Just the idea of the story situation itself when spelled out must provoke a notion of humor or absurdity. 

As of this writing the following are my twenty favorite movie comedies of all time filmed in English.  In each case I have simply written out the premise as I see it.  I have not gone into detail or given even a thumbnail review or evaluation.  All of these, as far as I can tell, are available in DVD.  You will notice that the most recent release date is 1993.  This is not say that none of quality have come forth in the past twenty years, just that I have not seen one according to my standards that would surpass these particular choices. 

Let me make it clear that these are my selections and mine alone.  I have not consulted with any committee or taken any polls or put out any feelers, nor have I been directly or consciously influenced by any critic societies or special listings or any ratings system or group consensus.  These are my favorites; they are not my high-minded pronouncements of final judgment – not necessarily “the best” for any and all patrons of cinema art.  I have listed them in alphabetical order, not in any order of priority or preference.   

Broadcast News (1987)

Premise: A major TV news outfit is somehow managed by an eccentric, blatantly bipolar, perfectionist but likeable woman.  A tantalizing satire about the world of television journalism emerges, one that digs irreverently and deliciously at the underside of the profession.  

City Lights (1931)

Premise: A bungling, accident prone street tramp (none other than Charlie Chaplin’s) pulls an assortment of crazy devices out of his empty pockets to work a miracle – by way of considerable high jinks and the pulling of the audience’s legs.  

Dr. Strangelove, or

How I learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (1964) 

Premise: Imagine a lame brained American president; a puffed up and pushy General; a berserk Air Force commander; a paraplegic ex-Nazi adviser to the President; and a SAC pilot for whom the bomber plane is a delightful toy.  These outrageous creatures have a ball together cooking up a wacko version of World War III.

Forrest Gump (1994)

Premise:  A deep south fellow with a pea-sized brain but with unheard of motor attributes and an innocent and trusting nature goes from playground “idiot” as a child to college football star to Vietnam War valiant to industrial millionaire to loving father and turns out to be an inadvertent match for every crisis faced by the Baby Boomer generation.  He can never win for winning.  (You may consult my blog website and read my review of this one on my 7-20-12 posting.)

Gods Must Be Crazy, The (1980)

Premise:  Take the following ingredients and mix them together: the wanderings and habits of an African bushman searching for the edge of the world where he plans to deposit a coke bottle; a handsome wild life expert given suddenly to pratfalls and general clumsiness when he confronts women; quirky moments of interplay between man and beast; and amateur outlaws easily distracted from their criminal business to play cards or take a nap.  Of course the bushman is the show stealer.

Graduate, The (1967)

Premise: Benjamin, fresh out of the university and “a little worried about my future,” so overwhelmed and numbed by his parents and the flighty, eccentric world that they inhabit, is saved from total befuddlement by sexual attention from the deviously devilish and much older Mrs. Robinson – until he falls for her daughter.

Groundhog Day (1993)

Premise:  A bored and burned out weatherman finds himself reliving the same day of his life over and over and over again.  How would any of us react if we found that happening?   His responses to the experience are consistently cheeky, oddball and outrageous.

Lilies of the Field (1963)

Premise: A knockabout, itinerant African-American construction worker with a hang loose personality meets the Germanic and stern Mother Superior of a band of immigrant nuns who thinks he is the architect God has sent her and her sisters to build a chapel in the desert.  How’s that again? ? ?   Yeah, sure! ! !

Manhattan (1979)

Woody Allen again plays the schlemiel, this time a divorcee courting a teenager while becoming entangled with his married friend’s mistress and suffering continuing embarrassment at the hands of his lesbian ex-wife.  When asked why he got divorced, he replies, “My wife left me for another woman.”  Who are the teenagers and who the adults in this mix-up? 

Modern Times (1936)

Premise: The last movie in which Chaplin’s Little Tramp character was seen.  The awkward, mustachioed, baggy pants fellow with the cane and bowler hat this time does a tricky balancing act as he makes mirthful sport of industry and commerce and politics during the Great Depression. 

Moonstruck (1987)

Premise: The saucy, sassy, dippy, dizzy romantic turnabouts in a lively Italian American family, who fumble and tumble and dicker and bicker their way into our deepest affections. 

Philadelphia Story, The (1940)

Premise:  Cast and crew have heaping fun giving Philadelphia high society a tumble.  A wealthy, snooty heiress on her wedding day is unwound by the unexpected visit of her ex-husband and an overeager society columnist looking for the juicy story.  Screwball all the way!

1776 (1972)

Premise: Events leading up to the signing of the Declaration of Independence are given musical satire treatment, the movie derived from the Broadway production.  Imagine a surly John Adams who sings to his political opponents, a Thomas Jefferson who would rather be at home in bed with his Virginia wife than write the document, and a quite ribald, good humored Ben Franklin with an extraordinary gift for riposte.   The cast is huge and just about everyone in this Congress is slightly tilted.

Singin’ in the Rain (1952)

Premise:  An all-thumbs Hollywood studio for silent movies in the late 1920s is forced to convert to sound in this much adored musical.  The obstacles they have to confront as they trip over each other are flat out fun for the whole family.  

Some Like It Hot (1959)

Premise: Two jazz musicians during the Roaring Twenties on the lam from murdering mobsters must join an all-female band to hide away and stay safe, without any of its curvaceous constituents knowing who and what they are.  Yes, that’s right!  They have to dress up like women and persuade everyone that they are women.

Thousand Clowns, A (1965)

Premise:  Murray, an impudent society dropout, who happens to be a gifted and former comedy writer, is something of an adult child, determined “to give the world a goosing” however he can.  He lives in Manhattan with his precocious un-adopted 12-year-old nephew, who has assumed something of the adult role in their one-room apartment.  Murray’s lifestyle of pure whimsy and playfulness, however, gets a wild, sudden disruption when the child welfare bureau comes calling and he falls for the woman social worker handling his case. 

Tom Jones (1963)

Premise: The adventures of an 18^th century bastard kid in merry ole England trying to live down his disgrace are bawdy and bounding in all kinds of bedlam, brash buffoonery and naughtiness.  It is based upon the classic Henry Fielding novel.

Tootsie (1982)

Premise: A discontented actor, persona non grata to casting directors and eager to raise money for mounting the kind of sophisticated theatre in which he believes, disguises himself as a woman and gets chosen for the starring female lead in a TV soap opera.  Complications accrue, however, from this unusual setup, not the least the question of how he can maintain his cover and get out safely from under it when the time comes? 

When Harry Met Sally (1989)

Premise: These title characters are two unsettled young adults who require chance meetings, misunderstandings and forced acquaintance over many years to find out that they are right for each other.  Their endless efforts to fend each other off with flippant comments, manipulation and downright insult produce none of the desired negative effect, while cupid waits patiently in the wings. 

Young Frankenstein (1974)

Premise:  The third generation Dr. Frankenstein inherits the estate and is enticed back to the famous monster-making lab where he gets hooked.  It sounds scary, until you are told that Mel Brooks and Gene Wilder are serving things up, and how can we expect them to do that without an abundance of sight gags and zany creatures chewing up the scenery!  Here you only have to know who controls the picture to know we are not speaking of a drama or a horror show.

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