I admit that I tend to like really dumb movies. My favorites include Spaceballs, Caddy Shack, Wedding Crashers, most Adam Sandler films, and most Will Ferrel films. But lately I think the new “funny” movies are getting worse. Less attention is being paid to movie production (as seems to be the case with the majority of films today) and it seems like these movies are put together as quick as possible. Though many films used to be a farce they still centered around a loose story line. Something was actually happening. The last few movies in this genre that I have seen though have lost something. Writing, possibly, production value, sure, are they to quick to reference crude humor, ok; but really this has been part of all stupid movies. So what is it that is making them so bad and quite frankly not funny?
My most recent example would be Accepted. This seemed like a possible winner, at least for those of us that like dumb movies. But it was awful. The plot seemed like a good idea. A kid that had been a scam artist in high school was turned down by all of the colleges he applied to, to get his parents off his back he and some friends created a fake college with a website and all. The rub is that they made the website functional and it sent a letter to anyone that filled out a form online. So all of a sudden there were thousand of kids at the door with tuition money. Rather than turn them away they invited them in and craziness ensues. There are nice looking girls, some preppy frat boys (apparently only frat guys and deans can be the enemy in a college movie) that cause trouble, and an odd legal battle. All the elements are there but it just didn’t come together. I don’t know why other then the fact that the conflict was underplayed, and the climax was incredibly lame.
But this isn’t the only movie to disappoint. Most funny movies at least have their own theme, even if they are a spoof. Spaceballs was obviously making fun of Star Wars and other sci-fi movies. But at least it had it’s own story. Lately the worst of these movies haven’t even done that. Take for instance Scary Movie (1,2,3…), Not another Teen Movie, and Date Movie. These don’t even try they just string 70 minutes worth of sketches together based on scenes from movies of the genre they are spoofing. The last one in the list actually spoofed another type of comedy. This just isn’t funny. It seems that most of these movies are just plain being lazy; trying to score a quick buck from high school and college kids. I hope it works for them. I wonder though if they are just spreading out less money over more films because so many studios produce them on a regular basis. The end result for me though is that I don’t go to see many movies like this any more (though part of that is because my GF won’t go to any of them).
Not all dumb comedies are that dumb either. You, Me, and Duprie was pretty good, obviously Old School, and Wedding Crashers were hits. This season Night at the Museum could be pretty funny. Interestingly enough these all seem to be made by the same group of people. Why is it, that all the rest are so bad? Maybe as you get older the jokes get tired. Maybe there just isn’t that much new to come up with. So anyway I guess I still would say ‘Bring on the stupid movie’ just up the quality. Yes I know that seems like an oxymoron. But like I said I guess Stupid just isn’t always funny.
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