Although I found scenes or moments to laugh at in HORRIBLE BOSSES, I also found moments that made me cringe. Afterward, in trying to remember when cringe-worthy scenes first found their way into comedies, I came up with THERE'S SOMETHING ABOUT MARY. Now I must admit, I have always preferred verbal humor over sight gags so I am not objective here.
In a way, these movies want to have it both ways. Lots of saccharine, lots of nice guys, but a goodly dose of, for want of a better word, bathroom humor. It's almost an essential part of the genre by now if you exclude older film- makers like Woody Allen.
I can't think of a recent movie that didn't include several scenes of potty talk, vomit, body fluids, etc..
Can you think of an earlier movie that featured a jaw-dropping moment like the one in MARY?
Do you find it funny? Are body fluids inherently funny?
27 comments:
DUMB AND DUMBER featured the potty talk, body fluids, etc. I don't find it funny, but apparently Hollywood makes this kind of stuff mandatory in any contemporary "comedy."
Patti, I remember when THERE'S SOMETHING ABOUT MARY came out. A friend of mine told me about it, saying, "You have GOT to see this movie. It's the funniest thing ever!" I didn't really trust her judgment, so I refrained from seeing it for a couple of days, during which time everyone, and I mean everyone, was talking about this movie and how great it was. So I went to see it.
In scene after scene (and I thought the movie was NEVER going to get out of that bathroom), members of the audience were doubled over in stomach-clutching fits of laughter. I really don't think I've ever heard that much laughter in a movie theater, before or since.
Unfortunately, however, I found myself unable to even crack a smile.
Don't get me wrong. I'm not one of these stuffed shirts who can't find any humor outside the BBC. I love broad humor films, like AIRPLANE, THE NAKED GUN, and other such silly things, but THERE'S SOMETHING ABOUT MARY and all its imitators just leave me cold.
Well, as you know I can't stand Ben Stiller so that may have colored my review. Actually, there was one thing I did find funny (in my own perverse way) - the scene at the dark rest stop on the Turnpike when the lights suddenly came on. Now that made me laugh.
The stuff with the roommate was just (deliberately) disgusting. I must admit that I'm not a Cameron Diaz fan either but found her very likeable in this.
Jeff M.
Since I don't watch these kind of films, I wouldn't have a clue, and I consider that a very good thing.
I do wonder, however, why adults like to use the word "potty" for going to the bathroom, when it's a little kid word. When he gets squirmy, Mommy may ask little Johnny if he needs to go potty. When Johnny is grown up, John goes to the bathroom or restroom, he doesn't "go potty". Come on, it's embarrassing!
Farts (or as Momma Stella says it, "Fots") are ALWAYS funny ... when done in good taste, of course.
Just the word "fots" makes me laugh.
I'm laughing now ... but I'm a fool.
BLAZING SADDLES maybe. The farting round the campfire routine.
A COUNTESS FROM HONG KONG made much of sea-sickness vomiting. This kind of thing has been with us for a while, and what makes it so "necessary" is that it makes so many people uncomfortable enough to make them laugh at it (or use terms such as potty)...and it's a universal experience, so lowest common denominator thinking comes into play. Woody Allen doesn't avoid the scatological altogether, either, for that matter, but usually doesn't wallow in that (so much as other things). But the mega-success of BLAZING SADDLES and ANIMAL HOUSE and NATIONAL LAMPOON'S VACATION meant that these aspects were likely to be a mainstay, and AMERICAN PIE and such made sure the saccharine element would remain with us.
Also, you have "somthing" in your header...or is that to suggest the Dumberer tenor of the work in question? It's not funny at all in the likes of THE HANGOVER, a dismal waste of talented folks. While a film such as ETERNAL SUNSHINE OF THE SPOTLESS MIND manages to be very funny, among other things, with Jim Carrey in it no less, with essentially no scatology.
Also, of course, Shakespeare was no enemy of scatology. Nor, more recently, have been the likes of ALL IN THE FAMILY nor BARNEY MILLER.
Taht kind of humor just seems too easy to me. The scene in "Mary" was just disgusting. I couldn't watch it.
I think that, just like "verbal" comedies, it comes down to the skill of the writing and film-making. Tasteless comedies aren't inherently bad; it's just a matter of how well they pull it off. I enjoy smart comedies that employ clever dialogue, but by that same token I've been known to laugh outloud at slapstick and even "gross" comedy like Borat. But the best ones employ both, I think. Like The Hang-Over or Tropic Thunder.
I don't have a problem with either "potty humor" or "cerebral humor".
The sad thing, to me, is that it seems like the current wave of comedies fall back on coarse humor in lieu of having to actually write anything that even vaguely approaches a plot. It's all just one gag connected by the loosest of plots.
The thirteen year old boy living inside my brain loves potty humor and bodily fluids. As for fart jokes, he thinks their a gas.
Most recent movies I've seen, however, are when the thirteen year old is on vacay. Just as well.
Chaucer could tell a good fart joke and there's plenty of scatalogical humour in all existing writing in human history. But I'll throw my lot in with Chad and say the disappointment in a lot of this is lazy writing that simply substitutes bodily fluids and emissions for actual jokes. The fart joke in the Miller's Tale has an elaborate (and literary and even philosophical) set-up so by the time the fart flies, we're helpless with laughter when tee hee quod she and clapte the window to. Lazy attempts at humor annoy me, not necessarily the form of it, though I tend toward the verbal and surreal. And as Todd knows, didn't find Eternal Sunshine the least bit interesting and almost never funny. De gustibus --
Ah, the staples of modern humor:
Body Parts
Body Functions
Body Fluids
If you remove those three items from most comedies (and TV sitcoms) there's not much left.
Try counting the number of jokes in, say, Two and a Half Men, that feature one of those three staples. It's probably 90% of the show.
Hey, I laughed at Cheech & Chong's UP IN SMOKE until I fell on the floor. Of course, I was smoking along with them at the time...
No, I didn't think THE HANGOVER was funny and couldn't understand why it was such a huge hit. As for AMERICAN PIE and sequels, I didn't watch them.
I did laugh at certain scenes in PORKY'S, however. ("You know why they call her Lassie?")
And BLAZING SADDLES. And THE IN-LAWS (the original). But still, my #1 comedy is IT'S A GIFT ("Open the door for Mr. Muckle, the blind man!").
Jeff M.
I don't watch any of this stuff. I don't think I've seen a 'modern' comedy in years and years. Maybe the last one was COLD COMFORT FARM which had bits of borderline, but not to the point of making it cringe-worthy in any way. In fact, it's still probably my favorite comedy since the good old screwball days.
Well, that and Mel Brooks' TO BE OR NOT TO BE and the original of THE PRODUCERS with Zero Mostel and Gene Wilder. My kind of comedies.
Fots I'm tellin' yous ...
Seems lazy and "wasteful." Similar scenes in I Hope They Serve Beer in Hell, the few minutes I caught of it, anyway. In a study of languages and slang, there's a division between lingo groups that go for terlot (Archie Bunker voice) metaphors, some that go for sexual innuendo, and on. But can't remember how various countries stack up.
@ Anonymous - I guess we have at last discovered why I dislike and avoid sit-coms and comedy films.
I loved ANIMAL HOUSE (of course, I was in college at the time), but the scene where John Belushi impersonates a zit almost makes me feel sick.
There's a scene in THE MAGIC CHRISTIAN (starring Peter Seller & Ringo Starr, screenplay by Terry Southern) where a swimming pool is filled with raw sewage and then money is tossed into it. As Badfinger's "If you want it/Here it is/Come and get it" is playing on the soundtrack, people jump in the pool to snatch the bills. I still remember thinking I'd have to leave the theater, it was so gross--and that was 1970.
I've always considered myself a hater of bodily-fluid and cavity-space humor and bathroom humor and what names you can call it. But I have to admit I laughed until I couldn't breathe in MARY, but it wasn't the bathroom scene - it was the scene with when the dog died. I don't know what it is, I guess it's the outrageousness of it that I love. I do like it when writer's push our buttons with things that are normally taboo - as long as it's funny. And if you all are not into bodily fluids, don't see BRIDESMAIDS - another film I thought I'd hate but then I laughed like hell. I guess I'm more low brow than I care to admit. Sometimes I just want to laugh until I can't breathe, and to hell with the quality of the movie.
I have very little computer access so forgive my lack of response here.
Speaking of bathrooms in the movies reminds me of something completely different. The movies rarely showed people in bathrooms doing anything other than shaving, talking, or some screwball comedy kind of thing involving the shower or the bathtub. Toilets were off limits for decades. The first crazy bathroom moment in the movies involving toilet humor (in a way) I can remember was in one of the earliest mockumentaries called THE LEGEND OF BOGGY CREEK made back in the late 1970s. A guy is sitting on a toilet taking a dump and you wonder "What are we watching? And why?" Everyone is giggling in the theater and then -- a hairy monster hand comes bursting through the screened window next to him and everyone - yes, EVERYONE! - in the theater screamed their bloody heads off. Best bathroom scare ever in the movies. Better than Psycho. OH! and the guy on the toilet is scared as hell and he jumps off the toilet, pants around his ankles, and crashes through the door. Through the CLOSED door like some kind of cartoon character. Scares and hilarity at the same time. Best bathroom scare ever in the movies. Better than Psycho.
Adding to John's comment: I remember a scene in the original FUN WITH DICK AND JANE (late 1970s, with George Segal & Jane Fonda in the title roles) where Jane sits on the toilet and pees while she and Dick are discussing their plans. She tells Dick to turn on the faucet so he can't hear her pee...which makes no sense because he's right there in the bathroom with her. Most. Gratuitous. Bathroom. Scene. Ever. I have no idea if the scene was repeated in the remake--seeing it once was enough for me.
Early '70s, actually, John. I don't remember anyone actually screaming in my theater, but it was the least unmemorable moment of BOGGY CREEK.
Count me in as one who finds SOEMTHING ABOUT MARY seriously unfunny. However - whenever Jonathan Richman comes onto the screen to sing it is the best thing on earth.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FsXB5kITz78
For gross-out comedy, early John Waters is pretty hard to beat, but since they were (very) independent underground movies I suppose they don't count. PINK FLAMINGOS is still pretty hard to take, though.
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