I can't remember the last time a Hollywood comedy got a laugh out of me. In the 1990s, comedy was the number one genre of Hollywood-released films, but the days when a new one came out almost every week are gone.
So far this year, there’ve been over 30 “comedy” films that have had theatrical releases, although most of them are hybrid varieties such as horror/comedies, action/comedies, animated comedies, sci-fi comedy/dramas, fantasy comedy/romances, and musical comedies. Only 13 of these films are listed as the straight comedies that Hollywood specialized in for so many decades.
I think back to the time when Hollywood produced comic gold like the Pink Panther movies, six of which were released between 1963 and 1982. With Blake Edwards, a master of physical farce, providing directorial vision, Peter Sellers’ bumbling Inspector Clouseau character produced hilarity with his ability to deliver absurd dialogue with a straight face while remaining oblivious to the chaos he'd just created.
The Pink Panther films came out during a time in which visual, performance-based choreography combined with a single comic actor—Sellers was a rare talent—wearing a trench coat and speaking with a faux-French accent could produce a global blockbuster. The formula’s simplicity was its beauty. At the present time, comedy’s been degraded to the point where it's more like an element to throw into films of other genres to spice them up. Even “social message” films follow this formula. Don't Look Up (2021) pretended to be a comedy because its heavy-handed messaging lacked entertainment appeal. The problem was that its comic writing, with its cartoonish characters and smug tone, also came up short in that department.
The 2016 movie Deadpool is a good example of the direction Hollywood comedies are moving in. When it's time for some comic relief in a superhero movie, the writing becomes “meta,” allowing the film to wink at the viewer over the absurdity of the storytelling. Characters break the “fourth wall" to address the audience directly. Wade Wilson (Ryan Reynolds) says, "You're probably thinking, ‘My boyfriend said this was a superhero movie, but that guy in the red suit just turned the other guy into a fucking kabob!’ Well, I may be super, but I'm no hero.” Viewers now feel like they're in on the joke, giving them license to enjoy the predictability of these movies. They’re knowing observers, not suckers for souped-up mediocrity.
In The Pink Panther, on the other hand, the characters are sincere in their portrayal of absurd characters in ludicrous situations. Their seriousness towards their own preposterous behavior is what delivers the comedic punch. The detached cynicism of modern blockbusters like Deadpool invites the audience to interact with the film by looking in from the outside, while the Pink Panther model aims for total immersion in the story. This perspective allows the audience to best appreciate the humor of Inspector Clouseau’s desperate attempts to maintain his dignity despite his total incompetence as a police detective. The immersion approach produces more laughs because the audience feels it's inside the situation rather than judging the humor from the outside.
The past 10 years have been chaotic, but movie comedies have failed the anxiety-ridden populace right when they needed comic relief. There once was a time when Americans could sit and laugh together in a movie theater and forget about politics, the “affordability” problem, and the latest dumb foreign war that D.C. politicians had started. I'm referring to comedies like Blazing Saddles, directed by Mel Brooks, which in 1974 packed theaters with people roaring with cathartic laughter from the opening sequences to the final credits. That was the ticket after Vietnam exhaustion, inflation, Watergate, and the gas crisis, which had some waiting three hours to fill up their tanks.
But Hollywood has moved away from such mid-budget comedies in order to focus on “tentpole” franchises, superhero movies, and massive visual spectacles aimed at maximizing global profits. This happened even though The Hangover, with its modest budget, made over $470 million worldwide in 2009.
The international audience got the jokes in that blockbuster, but that's not always the case with comedies. That's what makes them look risky to the studios. When the railroad boss in Blazing Saddles says, “What in the wide world of sports is a-goin’ on here,” the American audience caught the comedic reference to the popular Sunday-evening sports show—ABC’s Wide World of Sports—and the folksy English usage of “a-goin on here.” Lines like these, written in subtitles, go right over the heads of audiences in Beijing and Tokyo. Blazing Saddles made peanuts with its international distribution while The Hangover, with its visual comedy (a tiger in the bathroom, a missing tooth, a destroyed hotel suite), raked in nearly $200 million abroad.
Another factor is that the Hollywood comedy environment is no longer the great beneficiary of the TV’s Saturday Night Live. The hit show produced A-list movie stars (Chevy Chase, Bill Murray, John Belushi, Eddy Murphy) who could open major studio comedies like National Lampoon's Animal House, Beverly Hills Cop, 48 Hours, Caddyshack, etc. But the NYC-LA comic pipeline's gone dry in the past 10 years. The work of these less bankable SNL cast members —Andy Samberg, Kate McKinnon, Kristen Wiig, and Pete Davidson—is now found on streaming services.
Streaming has become the natural medium for comedy films now that Hollywood’s decided that its money’s better spent on providing an audience willing to pay what it takes to go to a theater with a spectacle rather than laughs. Comedy’s very hard to make. It can sometimes take a stand-up comic years to put together just an hour of material. A good comedy movie looks effortless, but it's the most difficult genre to pull off. It's much easier, and less risky, to string together a number of spectacular set pieces with a generic plot and uninspired writing. Capturing an audience with explosions and helicopter crashes is a simpler task than making them laugh.