Photo Credit: Tiffany Parker
Comedy is a lighthearted genre that focuses on humor for the full duration of a film’s runtime. To me, the role of these films is often to make people forget about their hardships, and lose themselves in a fictional world that makes them feel better about their lives.
I have always been an avid film fan, and have appreciated the time and effort it takes to create a story from just an idea. Comedy has always been one of my favourite genres, and I enjoy having a good laugh while watching talented people be ridiculous for a few hours.
Some of my favourites that I recommend include Horrible Bosses (2011), The Hangover (2009), Game Night (2018), and Tag (2018). I like that these films play with the absurdity of their situations in a way that’s amusing, and really focus on the satirical aspect of comedy. These films twist everyday issues like disliking your boss, playing boardgames with friends, and a night out, into something much bigger as the characters dig their graves deeper.
Of course, comedy is nothing without the talent of the actors. There exists a misconception that being a comedy actor is easier than being a dramatic actor. The reason I disagree with this take is that everyone can be emotional, but not everyone is funny. Some of my favourite performances include: Chris Tucker in Rush Hour (1998), Ryan Gosling in The Nice Guys (2016), Jason Bateman in Game Night (2018), Melissa McCarthy in Identity Thief (2013), as well as Jake Johnson and Andy Samberg in about anything.
Although comedy is one of the more beloved genres, a question movie enjoyers have raised on social media is whether they’re as good as they used to be. On social media and in film reviews, people have complained about the ever-declining quality of these films in recent years.
Alexandre Albert, a first-year film student at the University of New Brunswick, said:
“I guess I feel like a lot of newer comedy movies take themselves too seriously. I watched a lot of 80s and 90s comedies in my childhood. They were all batshit … and not serious at all. But I don’t think there are movies like that anymore—they just aren’t blockbusters.”
In my opinion, comedy films have been declining in quality for a few reasons. One of which is that they try too hard. Humor is supposed to seem effortless, or else it loses the satirical feel to the joke. Movies as of late try too hard to be funny, incorporating Gen Z humor to seem relatable—often to their detriment. Examples include You Are So Not Invited to My Bat Mitzvah (2023) and Mean Girls (2024). Both try so hard to seem relatable to Gen Z that they simplify the generation into insulting stereotypes.
The issue with incorporating Gen Z humor and “memes” is that it’s constantly changing. New jokes are trending every month. Writers will try to include a joke that’s trending, but when the movie comes out, it stopped trending months or even years ago. Older generations didn’t have the opportunity online to create different memes every few weeks, meaning that when writers wrote something into a film, it would still be in-trend, or part of a general humorous social consciousness.
We’ve also seen a major downtick in the amount of comedy films released every year, at least when it comes to true comedy. Even when a comedy movie does come out, typically it’s a mixture with another genre such as action, sci-fi, horror, drama, or romance to appeal to wider audiences. This issue on top of the fact that the general media has been shifting away from comedy means that comedy hasn’t been able to get enough love. On different social media platforms like TikTok and Instagram, film critics and actors like Nicky Reardon, Clear Critique and even Seth Rogan have been making complaints about comedy films, with commenters widely agreeing with them.
Whether or not it’s the limited production or the poor execution, comedy feels like a dying art in the film industry. It seems Hollywood is at a point where they’ve moved past the comedy genre and now focus on different genres giving an opportunity for them to shine. Although, I still hope that the quality in comedy films increases; with the current state of the world, a good laugh would make it all feel a little less heavy.
