Top Comedies #1: The decline of our moral fiber.

Mel Brooks would like to think that he is responsible in some way for the vulgarity that we see in movies today. And when he says that, I think he is talking, as usual, about sex. The fictional character, Max Bialystock may have to pretended to produce a play in an elaborate scheme to defraud investors of money, but Mel Brooks (whose initials he shares, MB) probably did in fact create movies in an even more elaborate scheme just to get laid. All his heroes share this common trait. From Robin Hood to Comicus, each has lofty ambitions which are only a role they take on in an indefatigable attempt to get some action. When Robin speaks about justice and patriotism, he is playing. It is only when Marion is involved that he is really engaged. And, the heroines are just as up for it. But the thing that makes Frederick Frankenstein so much funnier than the rest is that he takes himself so seriously, he seems to fool even himself. 

Top Comedies #2: "Serpentine!"

There are a handful of common activities that provide the basic material for, without speaking too generally, most metaphors we use today. Sports, dinner parties, and poker. Comedies are like poker. Situations, actors, quotable lines, and combinations thereof are the hands that are dealt. A winning comedy finds a way of using what is dealt and a little of what Sting called "the sacred geometry of chance" in order to succeed. But success isn't beating other players (all metaphors are limited), it is making us laugh.

There is also bluffing, which is essentially overplaying your hand. See every Will Ferrell movie ever made for examples. Sure, Ferrell is funny. And when he has a strong hand to play, he wins big. But when he has a weak hand, despite a few quotable moments, he and his standard set of cohorts play it as though it was strong anyway. And the results are hard to watch, or even just plain forgettable. Dissecting these movies to see what went wrong is difficult. They seemed to have all the parts necessary to be a success. The problem is, when you put them together, there is only so far you can take them. Any further is based only on undue confidence in their strength. They are a bluff. The In-Laws is just the opposite.

Top Comedies #3: From when talent was more than a matter of grooming.

Mr. Mom, I expect, will expose me to the more ridicule than any other post, even those sophomoric philosophical posts which would be better kept in a sealed box in the back corner of a locked basement. You know, the place where you keep your Fleetwood Mac records. But while I am a nerd, and a dork, I am never a geek and just won't give in to caring too much what others think. Mr. Mom is great. If you don't agree, that's fine. Just go watch some South Park, or Archer, or whatever other puerile, cynical, scatological, phony satire that you are convinced is brilliant. As for me, I'll be too busy trying to catch my breath from uncontrollable laughter to really care how deep this movie is.

Top Comedies #4: Don't judge me, I was 14 when this came out.

 In the business driven movies of the 80s, comedies followed a few basic, formulaic guidelines. There was usually a wise-cracking hero and a woman who, by being generally inaccessible, motivates him to overcome an antagonist. The hero, despite his outward lack of seriousness or even physical fitness, is smart and competent. The antagonist is borrowed from another genre, be it horror (Ghostbusters), mystery/noir (Fletch), or even silent films (UHF). Sure there were other formulas, including a whole subgenre of Animal House inspired underachievers beat the jocks movies. But this goofball-saves-the-day plot was used so much, and so consistently, that in the 90s, comedies like Wayne's World were essentially parodies of this structure. It is assumed that the hero and the unattainable woman would get together, so the obstacles are really just jokes about other movies. The villains become even more exaggerated. And the heroes don't even have to demonstrate any real competence to win in the end. Dumb and Dumber may not actually be one of these parodies, though it can't be understood without reference to them. It has all the elements of a meta-cinematic deconstruction of a movie like Stripes but, in my opinion, it lacks the pretense necessary to be a comment on anything.

Top Comedies #5: Underrated Socially Conscious Bromance

 What could possibly be said to express how good this movie is? It will make you love Martin Lawrence. Yep, that's probably it. It's not likely that Nothing to Lose will make any other lists of top comedies. Describing this movie without making it seem like the generic buddy comedy meets caper flick that it may have actually become requires suspension of most critical faculties. After all, it is a movie best described by taking one genre and having it "meet" another. Still, you don't have to choose to like it the way you would, say, a Harry Potter movie. It almost dares you to dismiss it, and then it dazzles you with a humor free of cynicism that is impossible to resist.

Top Comedies Series

In an effort to make choosing topics to write on simpler for a while, I am going to do a list of my favorite comedies. It will feature five movies, in a rough order until I get to the big reveal of my pick for funniest movie ever made. That is, the other four movies featured aren't ranked as clearly as number one. It is just too difficult to quantify funniness.

Please, comment. Let me know what I get wrong. What I should have said. What you think.

Feedback

OK, so I received some feedback this week. It was actually kind of nice. A relative asked me to post about The Matrix and Descartes. And a friend asked me to blog about the Peter Sellers classic Being There. I may have to break my own rule of keeping movies and philosophy separate to post on these, but I don't mind. Once I get a chance to see these again, and read up on Descartes, I'll write about them.

If you have any movies or ideas you would be interested in discussing, please comment. I'd  be happy to try to accommodate.

Billy Wilder

     Like many great Americans, Billy Wilder was an immigrant. Born in Austria, Wilder had been a successful screenwriter in the German film industry before the rise of the Third Reich. Being Jewish, he moved to Paris. Then, in 1933, to Hollywood. Within six years, he had learned English well enough to write Oscar nominated screenplays. After that, he did what any former tabloid reporter with intimate knowledge of political tyranny and religious persecution would do. He perfected film noir.

It is impossible to talk about the movie Dune, and keep your dignity.

       Nothing can be said about Dune in anything but a whisper, or a shout. It is impossible not to love Dune. It is impossible not to mock it with mercilessness usually reserved for hatred. It is only possible to describe it with egregious generalizations, all of which are true and inaccurate. It is awesome. It is awful. It is a spectacle of awe-ness, both broad and narrow that is at the same time the best and the worst of movies. It is naivete fully realized. It is going North, to get South in a non-Euclidean dream universe where poles are interchangeable.

Will someone please explain Tom Cruise's knees?

     As a fan of admittedly dumb movies, I don't have much justification for being a cranky jerk about someone like Tom Cruise. But, this is a blog post. If I was going to not say something just because it is unnecessarily sarcastic and lacking in perspective, then it wouldn't be any fun. Unlike your typical Netflix user, I see that it is sort of ridiculous to criticize a movie that isn't serious for not being serious. And that is not what I am doing. I sort of like the Mission Impossible franchise. It is kind of what I look for on a Friday night, when all I want to do is unwind after the grind of the working week. Mindless fun with enough story to keep you watching. I even bothered to watch the most recent installment, Ghost Protocol (see link above) in the theatre, something I rarely do recently (two kids), because it was directed by Brad Bird, who understands as good as anyone exactly what I want to see in a movie. And, while I will admit that Cruise has a large portion of movie star talent, I think the biggest problem with any Tom Cruise movie is the fact that he is in it. I recall one review of Ghost Protocol encouraging people to see it because it was "so good it will make you forget how much you don't like Tom Cruise." It almost succeeded.

Galaxy Quest

          Take a moment and recall a conversation you are almost sure to have had, about what makes a book a classic book. If you've never had this conversation, I suggest you avoid it. Without fail, an otherwise intelligent person will offer the following opinion, which is, just under the surface, a willful rejection of all cultural achievement since the Egyptians and the Phoenicians created and disseminated written language: that a great book is defined by being a "page-turner." That really good writing engages your attention and keeps you involved. That the quality of a book is equal to how fun it is to read. Please don't misunderstand me, I am not suggesting that great books cannot have this quality. No, the problem with this standard is that it does not apply to most of the books that we recognize as a culture to be classics.  (Richardson's Clarissa somehow made it in to the top ten novels of all time according to The Guardian.) Without getting into a critical debate over whether cultural authority means anything, I'd like to claim that it is in fact the best standard. And, while acknowledging that this is a generalization with numerous exceptions, I also claim that anyone who believes they can disregard cultural authority in favor of their "page-turner" standard does so because they realize they hate most of the greatest books ever written and they don't want to accept the basic fact that they don't understand things they wish they did.

Thoughts on James Bond and the release of Skyfall

           Finally, after four years, the inevitable follow-up to Casino Royale and Quantum of Solace has made its way to theatres. This is the longest interval between movies while there was a sitting Bond. But the enthusiasm generated from the success of Casino Royal has not worn off, despite the perceived failure of Quantum. The viewing public will no doubt be subjected once again to curiously sincere and lavish praise of the revised Bond movies. Truly head-scratching adjectives such as “serious,” “realistic” and, “smart” will appear in otherwise competent critic’s columns. Rotten Tomatoes already has it at 92%. Make no mistake, I count myself a fan of the Bond movies. I will see it, and hopefully I will like it. But I will never make a case that Bond is “realistic.” To do so is to misunderstand the nature of Bond movies, and what makes them worth being a fan of.