- Mar 14, 2012
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It’s essay time. Fear not, I'm breaking it up into 7 installments spread out over a few weeks time. Depending on how the discussion goes here, it might spill over into the podcast. So please, discuss! (hint, hint)
I was reading an article in Entertainment Weekly where movies were being recommended to a 17 year old actress by 2 actors in their 40’s. I thought, “hey I’m in my 40’s, I wonder if I’d suggest the same flicks”. Nope. As usual, the list was completely pretentious and full of stuff I would have no interest in, nor would any normal 17 year old. So it got me thinking, what are films I’d recommend? Films the actors in the article might roll their eyes at the same way I did to them?
To the DVD rack I went, and I started jotting down titles. It’s not like my movie collection is filled with obscure stuff, but I do have movies I think fall through the cracks of people’s memories. Movies that if mentioned in conversations are either greeted with, “oh I remember that one; it’s really good” or “no, never bothered or heard of that one”. Some of these in fact I have mentioned in casual conversation with twenty somethings and was greeted with a blank look, like they had no idea what I was talking about. Stupid generation gaps.
Anyway, play along, feel free to rip into me, or vociferously agree. Better yet, watch ‘em for yourself if you too are glazing over wondering what the hell I’m talking about.
HAR HAR HARDY HAR
Humor is so subjective, that once you move away from the heavyweights, all bets are off. I personally like a movie that I can quote. I also enjoy absurdity. Most importantly, I like a comedy that can make me laugh no matter how many times I’ve seen it. The problem is that what might be funny to me could be completely offensive to you. In my own home, I adore Monty Python while my wife finds them painfully unfunny. No accounting for taste.
Clerks – 1994
I know, who hasn’t seen this, right? Right? Apparently a lot of people. I have a t-shirt that features a pic of Olaf and the word ‘BERZERKER’ under it and am greeted by an overwhelming majority of people having no clue what it’s from. The humanity.
I get it though. Clerks is a dialogue movie featuring 20 somethings. It barely has any camera work to speak of, there are no elaborate set ups, it is in black and white. That’s a lot going against it. What is does have is some of the most quotable dialogue ever. If you have ever worked a retail job, this movie should speak to you on a personal level.
In fact, I was working retail when I saw it. I proceeded to tell the entire movie to one of my co-workers in such detail, that when they saw it for themselves they felt like they’d already seen it. That co-worker happened to be Andrea, who I’d later date and get married to, but not until after we stopped working together. So yeah, bit of a sentimental favorite here.
Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World – 2010
On the complete opposite spectrum of the comedy world from Clerks, there’s this. It is high concept all the way. The visuals are fantastic, you have to have some old school gaming in your past to get many of the references, the humor is fairly deadpan, and it has some fantastic fight sequences to boot. That being said, it’s already fading from people’s memory. Ten years from now it’ll be like Clerks.
Simply put, I fell in love with this movie about 5 minutes in. It’s not a gut buster, but you can’t help but have a smile on your face the entire time. This is from the same director that did Shawn of the Dead, another high concept comedy that isn’t punchline funny, but one people do still remember. So why Scott Pilgrim? Because it is smart and doesn’t pander for laughs. Every moment is earned, and the payoffs leave you feeling a bit giddy. It also has a killer soundtrack, but that’s beside the point.
When I saw this the theater was near empty except for an elderly couple. I thought for sure they had the wrong movie and expected them to get up and leave early on. They sat through the entire thing, credits and all. And they looked like they enjoyed it, so there.
Strange Brew – 1983
This is stupid comedy. Bob and Doug McKenzie pre-date Beavis and Butthead, Bill and Ted, Wayne and Garth, Harold and Kumar, but they are all cut from the same mold. Take two idiots, take away their main source of ‘entertainment’, and watch them outsmart everyone. My wife thinks it’s a moronic movie whenever I watch it, and then she promptly forgets about it. Silly wife.
It purposely starts out terrible, which is genius. It slowly works in the ridiculous, and then gleefully goes off the rails. There is a scene in a courtroom that used to send me and a friend of mine into fits of laughter to the point we’d have to pause the movie to recover.
Stupid humor has to be smart though. This movie adds joke upon joke, so that two punchlines get combined later to become yet another punchline. It is silly through and through, but I think most people ignore it because it looks like one of those terrible SNL movies that weren’t Wayne’s World. Wayne’s World wishes it was Strange Brew. So take off, eh.
Better Off Dead – 1985
This and One Crazy Summer are the poor man’s John Hughes movies. Similar themes with teens, finding love, and finding the better you, but they differ in the level of absurdity. There is nothing remotely real in the situations Better Off Dead approaches, and yet it works.
Think about this… the entire movie is about a guy trying to commit suicide over losing his girlfriend to a jock. Laughing yet? He always comes to his senses just before going through with it, only to have some outside force make him do it anyways. Amazingly, he always survives. If the gallows humor doesn’t win you over, fine. There’s also his clueless parents, his silent yet brilliant younger brother, a relentless paperboy, the creepy foreign exchange student hosts, drag racing with the least likely of racers, a stop motion hamburger that plays Van Halen, and a best friend that tries to get high on everything but drugs.
Again, I think this is a movie that gets overlooked in favor of the larger box office hits of the time like Sixteen Candles. I’ve never met anyone that didn’t like this movie though, and it is a perfect example of an 80’s movie done right.
Undercover Brother – 2002
This movie has so much fun with stereotypes, you start looking over your shoulder for the PC police to take you in for laughing. I don’t know what possessed me to see this in the theater, but I did. Right off the top, we see our hero in his car, doing a 360 ever so casually, and not spilling a drop of his orange soda. I nearly lost it because of the fact it was orange soda.
See, I worked at Raging Waters (a water park) for 2 summers as a cashier at the main burger concession stand. We didn’t sell a lot of orange soda, but when we did, 9 times out of 10 it was to a brotha’. Don’t you dare call me racist. Later the movie makes a joke of white people and their love for Mayo. Again, my work experience of those summers made me laugh hysterically. Stereotypes are what they are for a reason…there’s certain truth to them. Undercover Brother plays with them in many different ways, but never makes it feel like exploitation. Which is strangely odd, as it is really a send up of blacksploitation movies. It is not the hilarious homage that Black Dynamite is, but they are two sides of the same coin.
Oh, Neil Patrick Harris is in this one, and he kills it so hard. This was the start of his reemergence; he was still a few rolls away from becoming NPH. I’d also like to nominate the final bad guy death as brilliantly out of left field. Comedy shouldn’t be obvious or predictable. I really think this movie is easy to overlook, but doing so is to miss out on a truly funny film.
Next installment will be all about Heist and Con Game movies, a favorite genre of mine that gets little love. Keep your eyes peeled for it next week.
I was reading an article in Entertainment Weekly where movies were being recommended to a 17 year old actress by 2 actors in their 40’s. I thought, “hey I’m in my 40’s, I wonder if I’d suggest the same flicks”. Nope. As usual, the list was completely pretentious and full of stuff I would have no interest in, nor would any normal 17 year old. So it got me thinking, what are films I’d recommend? Films the actors in the article might roll their eyes at the same way I did to them?
To the DVD rack I went, and I started jotting down titles. It’s not like my movie collection is filled with obscure stuff, but I do have movies I think fall through the cracks of people’s memories. Movies that if mentioned in conversations are either greeted with, “oh I remember that one; it’s really good” or “no, never bothered or heard of that one”. Some of these in fact I have mentioned in casual conversation with twenty somethings and was greeted with a blank look, like they had no idea what I was talking about. Stupid generation gaps.
Anyway, play along, feel free to rip into me, or vociferously agree. Better yet, watch ‘em for yourself if you too are glazing over wondering what the hell I’m talking about.
HAR HAR HARDY HAR
Humor is so subjective, that once you move away from the heavyweights, all bets are off. I personally like a movie that I can quote. I also enjoy absurdity. Most importantly, I like a comedy that can make me laugh no matter how many times I’ve seen it. The problem is that what might be funny to me could be completely offensive to you. In my own home, I adore Monty Python while my wife finds them painfully unfunny. No accounting for taste.
Clerks – 1994
I know, who hasn’t seen this, right? Right? Apparently a lot of people. I have a t-shirt that features a pic of Olaf and the word ‘BERZERKER’ under it and am greeted by an overwhelming majority of people having no clue what it’s from. The humanity.
I get it though. Clerks is a dialogue movie featuring 20 somethings. It barely has any camera work to speak of, there are no elaborate set ups, it is in black and white. That’s a lot going against it. What is does have is some of the most quotable dialogue ever. If you have ever worked a retail job, this movie should speak to you on a personal level.
In fact, I was working retail when I saw it. I proceeded to tell the entire movie to one of my co-workers in such detail, that when they saw it for themselves they felt like they’d already seen it. That co-worker happened to be Andrea, who I’d later date and get married to, but not until after we stopped working together. So yeah, bit of a sentimental favorite here.
Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World – 2010
On the complete opposite spectrum of the comedy world from Clerks, there’s this. It is high concept all the way. The visuals are fantastic, you have to have some old school gaming in your past to get many of the references, the humor is fairly deadpan, and it has some fantastic fight sequences to boot. That being said, it’s already fading from people’s memory. Ten years from now it’ll be like Clerks.
Simply put, I fell in love with this movie about 5 minutes in. It’s not a gut buster, but you can’t help but have a smile on your face the entire time. This is from the same director that did Shawn of the Dead, another high concept comedy that isn’t punchline funny, but one people do still remember. So why Scott Pilgrim? Because it is smart and doesn’t pander for laughs. Every moment is earned, and the payoffs leave you feeling a bit giddy. It also has a killer soundtrack, but that’s beside the point.
When I saw this the theater was near empty except for an elderly couple. I thought for sure they had the wrong movie and expected them to get up and leave early on. They sat through the entire thing, credits and all. And they looked like they enjoyed it, so there.
Strange Brew – 1983
This is stupid comedy. Bob and Doug McKenzie pre-date Beavis and Butthead, Bill and Ted, Wayne and Garth, Harold and Kumar, but they are all cut from the same mold. Take two idiots, take away their main source of ‘entertainment’, and watch them outsmart everyone. My wife thinks it’s a moronic movie whenever I watch it, and then she promptly forgets about it. Silly wife.
It purposely starts out terrible, which is genius. It slowly works in the ridiculous, and then gleefully goes off the rails. There is a scene in a courtroom that used to send me and a friend of mine into fits of laughter to the point we’d have to pause the movie to recover.
Stupid humor has to be smart though. This movie adds joke upon joke, so that two punchlines get combined later to become yet another punchline. It is silly through and through, but I think most people ignore it because it looks like one of those terrible SNL movies that weren’t Wayne’s World. Wayne’s World wishes it was Strange Brew. So take off, eh.
Better Off Dead – 1985
This and One Crazy Summer are the poor man’s John Hughes movies. Similar themes with teens, finding love, and finding the better you, but they differ in the level of absurdity. There is nothing remotely real in the situations Better Off Dead approaches, and yet it works.
Think about this… the entire movie is about a guy trying to commit suicide over losing his girlfriend to a jock. Laughing yet? He always comes to his senses just before going through with it, only to have some outside force make him do it anyways. Amazingly, he always survives. If the gallows humor doesn’t win you over, fine. There’s also his clueless parents, his silent yet brilliant younger brother, a relentless paperboy, the creepy foreign exchange student hosts, drag racing with the least likely of racers, a stop motion hamburger that plays Van Halen, and a best friend that tries to get high on everything but drugs.
Again, I think this is a movie that gets overlooked in favor of the larger box office hits of the time like Sixteen Candles. I’ve never met anyone that didn’t like this movie though, and it is a perfect example of an 80’s movie done right.
Undercover Brother – 2002
This movie has so much fun with stereotypes, you start looking over your shoulder for the PC police to take you in for laughing. I don’t know what possessed me to see this in the theater, but I did. Right off the top, we see our hero in his car, doing a 360 ever so casually, and not spilling a drop of his orange soda. I nearly lost it because of the fact it was orange soda.
See, I worked at Raging Waters (a water park) for 2 summers as a cashier at the main burger concession stand. We didn’t sell a lot of orange soda, but when we did, 9 times out of 10 it was to a brotha’. Don’t you dare call me racist. Later the movie makes a joke of white people and their love for Mayo. Again, my work experience of those summers made me laugh hysterically. Stereotypes are what they are for a reason…there’s certain truth to them. Undercover Brother plays with them in many different ways, but never makes it feel like exploitation. Which is strangely odd, as it is really a send up of blacksploitation movies. It is not the hilarious homage that Black Dynamite is, but they are two sides of the same coin.
Oh, Neil Patrick Harris is in this one, and he kills it so hard. This was the start of his reemergence; he was still a few rolls away from becoming NPH. I’d also like to nominate the final bad guy death as brilliantly out of left field. Comedy shouldn’t be obvious or predictable. I really think this movie is easy to overlook, but doing so is to miss out on a truly funny film.
Next installment will be all about Heist and Con Game movies, a favorite genre of mine that gets little love. Keep your eyes peeled for it next week.
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