There's no money in smart comedy... see Arrested Development. Sitcoms and various British films have their moments, but it's a dieing trade, because...
THINK WHILE LAFF NO FUNN
Smart drama on the other hand has been wildly successful in television, even to the point where pseudo-smart drama is pretty much evident in every dramatic series. Every dramatic series nowadays seems to have a savant at the helm, and members of the peanut gallery who keeps things real. House, Lie To Me, Bones, Fringe, Breaking Bad, 24, etc.
I agree with everything you wrote there. Especially the part about what actually sells. Which in and of itself is a sad commentary on society if you ask me.
But I am not even talking necessarily about smart comedies but comedies that are just funny and fun to watch. We could see the slippery slope with Sandler's early movies, and Jim Carrey's, but even then Sandler's and Carrey's characters and style were mostly slapstick based on characters we could relate to and root for.
I mean what happened to comedies with likeable characters that we actually care about and scenes that are truly funny because they grow out of the relationships and interaction of the characters, instead of forced, f-word laden drivel and cruelty being passed off as guffaw-worthy "comedies".
We saw 40-year-old Virgin in theaters and there were few moments that had the audience laughing out loud. The hair waxing scene was one of them. The condom scene was another. But you know, we liked 40YOV because Carrell's was a likeable character that we cared about. The humor came out of his relationship with the other characters and his blossoming relationship with his love interest, and the attempts they made to just be disgusting and kick up the F-word quotient and potty-talk actually detracted from the good movie happening at the same time. The whole poker scene, the talk about the mexican horse thing and the little indian guy who never added more to a discussion than "F-YOU" could have all been left out and the movie would have been better for it.
We then watched Get Him to the Greek at home and are very glad we didn't go to theaters. There were far more uncomfortable and unnecessary scenes in GHTTG than 40YOV and it lacked a single character we could care about. We almost cared about Jonah Hill's character, but his willingness to just sell off everything he believed in with little or no introspection or consideration of the rest of his life made him fake and unbelievable so in the end we didn't really care about him. We tried to care about his girlfriend, but again her break from who she was as a person to just jump into the threesome and then get into it the way she did, not caring one whit about her relationship with Jonah's character made me pitty her more than care about her. Oh, and the whole threesome scene and other scenes were just disturbing, and in no way funny.
Apparently it is the crudity that they think sells (maybe it does, but we skipped super-bad because of that part of it). Anymore instead of writing a funny story about people, they just write a bunch of scenes that they think sound funny and make them as crude as possible so it comes across as "edgy". But they really aren't funny because humor comes out of the relationships and the people, not the scenarios. For example it would not be funny at all to see Jonah Hill's character from GHTTG get his chest waxed a la Steve Carrell because we really don't care about the character. But that scene was funny in 40YOV specifically because we did care about Carrell and therefore could sympathize with what he was going through to try to find love.
Ok I will step off the soapbox. I am sure no one here knows that I have a tendency to rant. =)
I was really just curious if I am the only one who views it that way or if everyone thinks I am just up in the night.
