Wednesday, October 15, 2014
Who Do You Find Funny?
Yesterday, I wrote on Yvette's blog that I have never found Abbott and Costello funny. Nor Laurel and Hardy nor the Marx Brothers. But I do find W.C. Fields funny. I am not sure why. Maybe his reactions are what I find funny. On the whole though, slapstick has always eluded me.
I also find Pryor, the early Cosby, and Louis CK funny. And Sarah Silverman when she is in the R and not the X mode. I never found Robin Williams very funny--mainly because I could rarely follow his train of thought.
Who do you find funny?
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29 comments:
I find some of Billy Crystal's work funny. And I used to like George Carlin, too.
Patti, I find Laurel & Hardy extremely funny but Charles Chaplin not so much. I enjoy good slapstick as in some of the Bud Spencer-Terence Hill films and in offbeat movies like "The Gods Must Be Crazy." Sometimes just a scene or two can be hilarious like the fight scenes in "Seven Brides for Seven Brothers" and "Wild Hogs." The acceptance speeches of actors who win film awards, like Michael Caine, for instance, are often funny; as was Jim Carrey's impersonation of Clint Eastwood for a lifetime achievement award.
Ron White, Robin Williams. I don't get Louie C K very well, although Lana likes him.
Like you, I find W. C. Fields funny. Bob Hope could make me laugh. Director Blake Edwards could always tickle my funny bone with his movies.
Jim Gaffigan makes me laugh out loud. I like English humor of the Rowan Atkinson/Blackadder variety. On the other hand, the "big" names like Sarah Silverman, Dane Cook, and Louie CK leave me cold.
I would nominate Bob Hope for a special award: Unfunniest Person Who Ever Walked the Earth.
There's also the 800-pound gorilla that nobody has mentioned yet: the Three Stooges. Opinions of them seem to shake down largely long gender lines. I like them.
Patti, I'm with you on Abbott and Costello, Laurel and Hardy, Robin Williams, et al and I can't stand Faulty Towers and that sort of English humour and foul-mouthed stand-up comedians. I still enjoy Stan Freberg and Allan Sherman when I hear their routines on nostalgia radio. I guess the bottom line is that I don't find many people funny.
I guess what we find humorous is very subjective and personal.
Comedy rocks. Among those you mention, definitely Fields and Abbott & Costello for me. For physical and reaction humor, I think Jackie Gleason was among the funniest ever. Lucille Ball was a comic genius. As was Robin Williams. TV sometimes seems to create memorably funny characters rather than spotlighting comedians, Kramer and Sheldon for example.
Patti, I agree with you on the ones you don't like - me neither. I never liked any of the comics that made a living belittling others, like Don Rickles.
I thought Jack Benny was funny, and some of Red Skelton, and Steve Allen was very funny.
The perversity and cynicism of the Seinfeld show is still my favorite form of humor.
Three Stooges, Marx Brothers, Abbott and Costello, Bob Newhart, Bill Cosby, Richard Pryor, Louis CK, George Carlin, Jim Gaffigan, Mel Brooks, early Woody Allen, Jerry Seinfeld, Blake Edwards, and many more I'm sure I'll think of in a minute.
I never cared for Jim Carrey or jerry Lewis. Billy Crystal is best in small doses.
Seinfeld, Monty Python - humor that is not afraid to depart from reality for the sake of a laugh. In written form, John Mortimer's Rumpole gets me every last time.
Henny Youngman, Rodney Dangerfield, Bob Newhart, Jack Lemmon in Good Neighbor Sam, Denis Leary, George Carlin, The Big Lebowski, Doris Day and Rod Taylor in The Glass Bottom Boat, Rock Hudson and Paula Prentiss in Man's Favorite Sport, Cary Grant in Father Goose, Airplane and Animal House.
Rodney Dangerfield, George Carlin, John Cleese, Lisa Lampenelli, Marx Bros., Harold Lloyd, WC Fields. Seinfield and Curb Your Enthusiasm. The Big Lebowski. Bringing Up Baby.
Never enjoyed the Las Vegas style comics-Norm Crosby, Don Rickles etc.
And never understood why Danny Kaye is so highly rated. Never found him funny.
Jack Benny always sets me off.
In movies I'd have to go with RAT RACE, if only for the scene at the Barbie Museum.
For TV, FAULTY TOWERS because Kitty can't stop laughing at the German episode.
For books you can't go wrong with Max Shulman, Terry Pratchett, and Parnell Hall's Stanley Hastings series.
Cartoons? Charles Addams, Charles Rodrigues, Walt Kelly, Gahan Wilson, Gary Larson.
My father would always roar whenever Donald Duck lost his cool.
P.G. Wodehouse. Ernst Lubitsch. Donald Westlake. Colin Watson. Bill James. Charlie Stella. Early Janet Evanovich. Frank McAuliffe.
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Movies? Big Deal on Madonna Street and Amarcord, to name two.
Easier to list the ones I don't find funny, and even then I'll leave some out; Robin Williams, Cosby, Jerry Lewis, Sinbad, Adam Sandler, Will Ferrell, Don Rickles, Roseann Barr, Arsenio Hall, and The Ritz Brothers.
Wow. It really is personal. I still find SEINFELD very funny although you have to find narcissistic and misanthropic people funny which I do. Same to with CURB YOUR ENTHUSIASM and THE LARrY SANDErS SHOw.
Jean Shepherd I find hugely funny-on the page and in the movie. All of those fifties comedians elude me except for some of the Nichols and May routines.
Walter Matthau, I found funny. Jack Lennon too. And Woody Allen before his personal life soured me on him.
Also unfunny: Bobcat Goldthwait, Chris Elliot, J.J. Walker.
But Chris Elliott's father, and the father's partner, were two of the funniest ever.
I just watched BEST IN SHOW AND A MIGHTY WIND again, and I these Christopher Guest mockumentaries crack me up. Especially Fred Willard and Eugene Levy.
Otherwise - Buster Keaton, Harold Lloyd, Laurel & Hardy, the Marx Brothers, Judy Holliday in BORN YESTERDAY, vintage Mel Brooks, Zero Mostel in THE PRODUCERS, John Cleese, Rowan Atkinson as Blackadder (but certainly not as Mr. Bean), Hugh Laurie, Stephen Fry, Liza Weil in THE GILMORE GIRLS.
And maybe it's something I ate, but I really like John Waters' movies.
Not funny: Chaplin, Jacques Tati, The Three Stooges, Abbott & Costello, John Belushi, Robin Williams, anything by Judd Apatow.
And folks - it's FaWlty Towers. Please.
Ah, how could I forget Myrna Loy - especially in THE THIN MAN and MR. BLANDINGS BUILDS HIS DREAM HOUSE.
Eddie Izzard.
Not that familiar with Eddie Izard.
Love the Christopher Guest mocks. esp BEST IN SHOW.
I'm a pretty good audience for most humorists and comedians...you have to work at being dull or derivative or mindlessly offensive for me to not find something in your comedy, I suspect...which doesn't mean that a whole lot of popular comedy doesn't leave me untickled, from the more conventional sitcoms to David Sedaris (his sister is funnier, but she too mistakes grotesquerie and sneering unpleasantness, more the former in her case, the latter in his, for wit). Pain and flatulence aren't too funny, either.
Rodney Dangerfield
Robert Klein
Yes, Fields is funny and IT'S A GIFT is my favorite. I can quote large swatches of it.
Robin Williams
Jack Benny (especially his interplay with Rochester)
Jim Gaffigan (his book was very funny)
In the right mood (ahem) Cheech and Chong (their first movie)
Jerry Seinfeld (usually)
George Carlin (before he got so full of himself)
the late, great Robert Schimmel always cracked me up
Louie Anderson (his Big Gulp and "beets" stuff are funny)
Lewis Black
Chris Rock (sometimes)
Jeff M.
I forgot one:
Lily Tomlin (her one woman shows were great)
Jeff M.
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