It seems like all of our favorite comedies came out in just one decade. Here's what I'm talking about
1980:
Airplane! (easily the funniest movie ever made)
Caddyshack
9 to 5
Blues Brothers
1983:
Trading Places
National Lampoon's Vacation
1984:
Beverly Hills Cop
Ghostbusters
1985:
Back to the Future
1986:
Ferris Bueller's Day Off
1988:
Naked Gun
Coming to America
A Fish Called Wanda
Probably didn't hurt movies like Airplane! that they were rated PG at the time. It was a lot easier for movie studios to push the envelope with a lot of things and still get an approachable rating. The same thing applies to horror movies when you had things like Poltergeist coming out with a PG rating.
Quote from: Max Rockatansky on January 28, 2021, 09:27:43 AM
Probably didn't hurt movies like Airplane! that they were rated PG at the time. It was a lot easier for movie studios to push the envelope with a lot of things and still get an approachable rating. The same thing applies to horror movies when you had things like Poltergeist coming out with a PG rating.
Airplane! got a PG rating with that inflatable autopilot scene?! Surely you can't be serious.
Quote from: kernals12 on January 28, 2021, 09:30:54 AM
Quote from: Max Rockatansky on January 28, 2021, 09:27:43 AM
Probably didn't hurt movies like Airplane! that they were rated PG at the time. It was a lot easier for movie studios to push the envelope with a lot of things and still get an approachable rating. The same thing applies to horror movies when you had things like Poltergeist coming out with a PG rating.
Airplane! got a PG rating with that inflatable autopilot scene?! Surely you can't be serious.
I agree but now it's more about putting a few gags in a romantic comedy or shoehorning a scene in an action movie. The parody genre (if you can call it that) ran its course by the end of the millennium. There's a lot more animation filling the comedy void; it's so much more profitable than it was in the 1980s, anyhow.
I think it's a matter of perspective - comedy movies rarely draw big bucks like before, the internet can sometimes make the jokes faster and fresher than the entire script can be written, let alone production times and release. A lot literally gets lost in translation in producing them for other markets. While parody is protected, there's always the chance of backlash nowadays (which ironically, the best format to try something un-PC).
Who knows, genres get re-charged and the time may well be ripe for a good laugh right now.
Quote from: kernals12 on January 28, 2021, 09:30:54 AM
Quote from: Max Rockatansky on January 28, 2021, 09:27:43 AM
Probably didn't hurt movies like Airplane! that they were rated PG at the time. It was a lot easier for movie studios to push the envelope with a lot of things and still get an approachable rating. The same thing applies to horror movies when you had things like Poltergeist coming out with a PG rating.
Airplane! got a PG rating with that inflatable autopilot scene?! Surely you can't be serious.
He is serious, and don't call him Shirley!
Quote from: Henry on January 28, 2021, 10:20:50 AM
Quote from: kernals12 on January 28, 2021, 09:30:54 AM
Quote from: Max Rockatansky on January 28, 2021, 09:27:43 AM
Probably didn't hurt movies like Airplane! that they were rated PG at the time. It was a lot easier for movie studios to push the envelope with a lot of things and still get an approachable rating. The same thing applies to horror movies when you had things like Poltergeist coming out with a PG rating.
Airplane! got a PG rating with that inflatable autopilot scene?! Surely you can't be serious.
He is serious, and don't call him Shirley!
Thank you for finishing the joke. It would've been a bad week to quit sniffing glue.
There were a few good sitcoms in the 90s and even a little later, but the best ones were earlier.
My family is currently making our way through Family Matters, if that tells you anything.
Quote from: kphoger on January 28, 2021, 11:06:53 AM
There were a few good sitcoms in the 90s and even a little later, but the best ones were earlier.
My family is currently making our way through Family Matters, if that tells you anything.
Agreed.
The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air was one of my favorites from the 90's.
Not long ago, the cast had a reunion and Janet Hubert (original Aunt Viv) showed up and patched things up with Will Smith. I thought it would be a cold day in hell before Janet and Will ever got in the same room again, considering that Janet had been shitting on Will ever since she got canned in 1993. Hell, a few years ago, Alfonso Ribeiro said "the bitch was crazy".
Quote from: kernals12 on January 28, 2021, 09:22:31 AM
It seems like all of our favorite comedies came out in just one decade.
All of
your favorite comedies. You can't speak for everyone. Unless the "12" in "kernals12" signifies that 12 people are all posting using the same account, in which case "our" is appropriate.
I completely reject the premise of using movies as a yardstick to judge when "comedy" reached its peak. Things can be funny outside of movies or television, and in fact I'd say–having a pretty weird sense of humor, as I'm sure everyone knows since I inflict it upon you all regularly–movies and television in general will always offer the
least funny comedy, since above all a movie or television show has to make money for somebody. It's humor a la McDonald's–appeal to
just enough people to make a buck but don't spend a dollar more than you have to appealing to anybody else.
And it's not going to get any better. The long-form motion picture is a dying medium because the theater business model is a dying business model. Covid drove a stake through its heart; now it's just a matter of seeing how long until the corpse stops twitching.
Personally, comedy reaches its peak when my friends (or family) and I are clowning around over a game that encourages such silliness. A good chunk of humor comes from the unexpected, and it's much easier to achieve that without the telegraphed story beats that a formal comedy movie or television show provides.
Maybe comedy reached its peak when stand-up comedy reached its peak.
Oh, wait, was that also the 80s?
Quote from: Scott5114 on January 28, 2021, 01:08:06 PM
Quote from: kernals12 on January 28, 2021, 09:22:31 AM
It seems like all of our favorite comedies came out in just one decade.
All of your favorite comedies. You can't speak for everyone. Unless the "12" in "kernals12" signifies that 12 people are all posting using the same account, in which case "our" is appropriate.
I completely reject the premise of using movies as a yardstick to judge when "comedy" reached its peak. Things can be funny outside of movies or television, and in fact I'd say–having a pretty weird sense of humor, as I'm sure everyone knows since I inflict it upon you all regularly–movies and television in general will always offer the least funny comedy, since above all a movie or television show has to make money for somebody. It's humor a la McDonald's–appeal to just enough people to make a buck but don't spend a dollar more than you have to appealing to anybody else.
And it's not going to get any better. The long-form motion picture is a dying medium because the theater business model is a dying business model. Covid drove a stake through its heart; now it's just a matter of seeing how long until the corpse stops twitching.
Personally, comedy reaches its peak when my friends (or family) and I are clowning around over a game that encourages such silliness. A good chunk of humor comes from the unexpected, and it's much easier to achieve that without the telegraphed story beats that a formal comedy movie or television show provides.
I am sorry, can you argue that the movies I've listed haven't had an enduring impact on our popular culture? People know what "Don't Call Me Shirley" or "Bueller? Bueller?" refers to. When it was revealed Dolly Parton donated to the research for Moderna's Covid vaccine, people were saying "it works 95, what a way to keep on living".
Quote from: kphoger on January 28, 2021, 01:11:31 PM
Maybe comedy reached its peak when stand-up comedy reached its peak.
Oh, wait, was that also the 80s?
It's probably no coincidence that many of the great comedy stars of the 80s like Dan Akroyd, Jon Belushi, Bill Murray, Eddy Murphy, and Chevy Chase were all SNL alumni.
Quote from: kernals12 on January 28, 2021, 01:15:00 PM
People know what "Don't Call Me Shirley" or "Bueller? Bueller?" refers to.
I've found that people younger than me don't know what such lines refer to. Maybe they weren't as enduring as you think.
No love for the Marx Brothers, Abbott and Costello, Buster Keaton?
Granted, a lot of their humor is not what would appeal today. But there is still something to be said for slapstick.
For me, a lot of Bugs Bunny is funnier than stuff mentioned in this thread.
Quote from: GaryV on January 28, 2021, 04:19:20 PM
No love for the Marx Brothers, Abbott and Costello, Buster Keaton?
Granted, a lot of their humor is not what would appeal today. But there is still something to be said for slapstick.
For me, a lot of Bugs Bunny is funnier than stuff mentioned in this thread.
Yeah, but I wasn't sure how widespread that caliber of comedy was back then. That is to say, was it at its peak yet back then?
Regarding ratings: PG-13 came out in 1984 and those movie makers before that did not want to have their films rated R.
Quote from: kphoger on January 28, 2021, 02:44:14 PM
Quote from: kernals12 on January 28, 2021, 01:15:00 PM
People know what "Don't Call Me Shirley" or "Bueller? Bueller?" refers to.
I've found that people younger than me don't know what such lines refer to. Maybe they weren't as enduring as you think.
On the other hand, just because some reference caught on doesn't mean that it really had much of an effect on the world at all. President Martin Van Buren had the nickname "Old Kinderhook" because he was from Kinderhook, NY. His 1840 re-election campaign signs said "Vote O.K." in reference to this nickname. As a result, "O.K." started to widely be used to gain the meaning of "acceptable" or "all right"–but Van Buren lost the election to William Henry Harrison, who himself ended up dying 31 days after his inauguration. In other words, every time you say "OK" or "okay" you're making a reference to an election where pretty much nobody really remembers anything of substance about either of the candidates!
Quote from: kphoger on January 28, 2021, 01:11:31 PM
Maybe comedy reached its peak when stand-up comedy reached its peak.
Oh, wait, was that also the 80s?
I wouldn't say it reached its peak in the 1980s, but it found a high spot on the mesa. There were certainly lots of comedians before that, and comedy clubs are still where a lot of talent gets scoped for TV/movies.
Scraping around on YouTube shows there's still a lot of fresh stand-up comedy from the last two decades, and I don't really think it will decline (my sense of humor will go first). The format moved more towards serialized TV and cable comedy; and that's all in the eye and funny bone of the beholder.
No comedy has been enduring as William Shakespeare's 'Much Ado About Nothing' & ' A Midsummer's Night Dream.'
Quote from: Hot Rod Hootenanny on January 28, 2021, 10:22:11 PM
No comedy has been enduring as William Shakespeare's 'Much Ado About Nothing' & ' A Midsummer's Night Dream.'
Not even the Divine Comedy?
Quote from: Scott5114 on January 28, 2021, 06:44:08 PM
On the other hand, just because some reference caught on doesn't mean that it really had much of an effect on the world at all. President Martin Van Buren had the nickname "Old Kinderhook" because he was from Kinderhook, NY. His 1840 re-election campaign signs said "Vote O.K." in reference to this nickname. As a result, "O.K." started to widely be used to gain the meaning of "acceptable" or "all right"—but Van Buren lost the election to William Henry Harrison, who himself ended up dying 31 days after his inauguration. In other words, every time you say "OK" or "okay" you're making a reference to an election where pretty much nobody really remembers anything of substance about either of the candidates!
Well, according the Oxford English Dictionary, the origin of OK as meaning "acceptable" precedes the whole Van Buren thing, although Van Buren did popularize the expression.
Quote from: OED
From the detailed evidence provided by A. W. Read it seems clear that O.K. first appeared in 1839 (an instance of a contemporary vogue for humorous abbreviations of this type), and that in 1840 it became greatly reinforced by association with the initialism O.K. n.1, O.K. int.2 (see discussion at that entry).
(The humorous abbreviation refers to oll korrect.)
(O.K. n.1, O.K. int.2 is the reference to Van Buren.)
I saw the title of this thread and immediately thought of how SNL was kind of bad in the early 80s, except for Eddie Murphy. The show did get better after Lorne Michaels came back, though (not sure if that's cause and effect or mere correlation).
Meanwhile (that seems like the wrong word), stand-up comedy probably had some of its best years in the 70s, when Richard Pryor and George Carlin's careers really took off. The 90s had the best sitcom (Seinfeld), the best Jim Carrey and Adam Sandler comedy films, and the best dialogue comedy film (The Big Lebowski).
Personally, I could never get into the more screwball-like comedy of the 1960s, and I can't say much for the 2000s and 2010s, either, except I can at least name a few comedy films from the 21st century that I do love.
I'm pretty sure that when they were building Berlin's new airport (which was a fiasco of biblical proportions that you should read about) when they tested the outdoor PA system, the voices started arguing about whether the red or white zone was for loading and unloading
Quote from: Scott5114 on January 28, 2021, 01:08:06 PM
Personally, comedy reaches its peak when my friends (or family) and I are clowning around over a game that encourages such silliness.
I would call that 'humor', not 'comedy'.
Quote from: kernals12 on January 28, 2021, 09:30:54 AM
Quote from: Max Rockatansky on January 28, 2021, 09:27:43 AM
Probably didn't hurt movies like Airplane! that they were rated PG at the time. It was a lot easier for movie studios to push the envelope with a lot of things and still get an approachable rating. The same thing applies to horror movies when you had things like Poltergeist coming out with a PG rating.
Airplane! got a PG rating with that inflatable autopilot scene?! Surely you can't be serious.
Not to mention the gratuitous (and awesome) exposed tits in the turbulence scene.
Quote from: Mr_Northside on January 29, 2021, 04:20:04 PM
Quote from: kernals12 on January 28, 2021, 09:30:54 AM
Quote from: Max Rockatansky on January 28, 2021, 09:27:43 AM
Probably didn't hurt movies like Airplane! that they were rated PG at the time. It was a lot easier for movie studios to push the envelope with a lot of things and still get an approachable rating. The same thing applies to horror movies when you had things like Poltergeist coming out with a PG rating.
Airplane! got a PG rating with that inflatable autopilot scene?! Surely you can't be serious.
Not to mention the gratuitous (and awesome) exposed tits in the turbulence scene.
Mind you, that was only the second funniest boob joke in a Leslie Nielson movie
Whenever some media outlet continues to flog a deceased equine day after day, I will invariably comment, "Generalissimo Francisco Franco is still dead." Increasingly, I get blank stares or "huh?" in return.
Quote from: stridentweasel on January 29, 2021, 07:21:43 AM
I saw the title of this thread and immediately thought of how SNL was kind of bad in the early 80s, except for Eddie Murphy. The show did get better after Lorne Michaels came back, though (not sure if that's cause and effect or mere correlation).
Just only "kind of bad"? Personally, I thought the drop-off from the "first generation" cast to the "second generation" was immense. Loved the first generation, despised the second generation (well, Joe Piscopo did have a few funny moments, and Eddie Murphy coming in a bit later was a breath of fresh air). Also remember the late Charlie Rocket getting fired for dropping the F-bomb while on air live.