COMEDY

DEFINITION OF COMEDY

Comedy is a genre of film that features light hearted stories designed to entertain and amuse an audience with humour.

Comedy is one of the oldest genres in film. In fact some of the first silent movies were comedies.

Comedy films traditionally have a happy ending unless it is a black comedy which indicates that there is a tragedy tied into the ending.

TYPES OF COMEDY FILMS

Slapstick This form of comedy relies on physical or visual gags

that do not necessarily rely on sound to create humour.

The Three Stooges are an excellent example of slapstick .

TYPES OF COMEDY FILMS

A Fish out of Water comedy involves a character in a new environment or situation which results in humour.

Situations like:

Swapping gender roles: Tootsie (1984), Mrs. Doubtfire (1993)

Swapping age roles: Big (1988) or Thirteen going on 30 (2004)

Rural meets City : Crocodile Dundee (1986)

TYPES OF COMEDY FILMS

Parody is a comedy that satirizes other film genres or classic films.

These films use sarcasm, stereotyping, and mockery of scenes from other films. The humour also involves the obviousness of meaning in a character's actions.

TYPES OF COMEDY FILMS

Parody Mel Brooks movies like Blazing Saddles

and Young Frankenstein mocked the western epic genre and the horror/thriller genre.

TYPES OF C0MEDY FILMS

Airplane! (1980) Is a parody of the popular disaster films of the 1970’s. This led to the Scary Movie franchise series which is an excellent example of parody that often encourages the audience to play along and identify the source .

TYPES OF COMEDY FILMS

The Anarchic Comedy This is a stream of consciousness film that lampoons or

makes fun of authority.

or the Marx Brothers film Duck Soup (1933) as well as National Lampoon’s Animal House (1978) are all examples of this genre .

TYPES OF COMEDY

The Anarchic Comedy Monty Python movies like Life of Brian (1979), and Monty Python and the Holy Grail (1976) are also examples of this type of film.

TYPES OF COMEDY FILMS

Black Comedy Black comedy uses humour and satire to deal with

taboo subjects like death by murder or suicide, sexual relations, or war .

Films like M*A*S*H*, Heathers, or Burn after Reading are examples of this type of comedy.

SUB-GENRES OF COMEDY FILMS

There are many sub-genres of comedy films since humour is a popular vehicle for hooking an audience into a story.

The Romantic Comedy is where we see a romantic relationship developing usually in the they meet, they fall in love and then they lose touch with each other, then they find each other again.

Films like The Princess Bride, Begin Again or The F Word are examples.

COMEDY SUB-GENRES

Action Comedy The action comedy sub-genre became popular in the

1980’s when comedians joined action stars in fast-paced stories that featured one-liners and physical comedy stunts. These buddy films started with Eddie Murphy who starred in 48 hrs and Beverly Hills Cop. Recently the television show 21 Jump Street was made into an action comedy.

COMEDY SUB-GENRES

Action Comedy This sub-genre is also popular in the martial arts action

films. Jackie Chan has made several of these types of movies both in America and in Hong Kong.

Films like The Incredibles , Kick Ass and Hancock are also a part of this sub-genre.

COMEDY SUB-GENRES

Comedy horror makes up another sub-genre of comedy films. These films use humour to embellish the dark themes of horror. They can be broken down into the following sub categories:

Parody/satire: one-liners and clichés pay homage or mock previous thrillers. Examples include: Young Frankenstein, An American Werewolf in London and Scream.

Splatstick: combines slapstick comedy with the all the splattering gore and violence of horror. Examples of this type would be Evil Dead and Ghostbusters.

COMEDY SUB-GENRE

Fantasy Comedy This sub-genre combines magic, mythology or the

supernatural with quips, one-liners, satire or parody and physical comedy. The hero or heroine is sometimes awkward and often funny.

Examples of this sub-genre include, Night at the Museum, Shrek and Being John Malkovich.

COMEDY SUB-GENRE

Science Fiction ComedyWhen you take a high tech space story and inject a lot

of humour you have a sci-fi comedy. Galaxy Quest pokes fun at all of the sci-fi television shows that became films. The Men in Black films spoof all of the extra-terrestrial films. The list of these types of films include: Spaceballs, Back to the Future, Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure and World’s End.

COMEDY SUB-GENRE

MILITARY COMEDYFinally we have military comedy where the very serious

military meets either one or a group of misplaced persons and hilarity ensues. Humour is often used as a coping mechanism in the military so often these films depict situations in peace time or away from the field of operations.

COMEDY SUB-GENRE

Military Comedy Films like Good Morning Vietnam used humour to illustrate the

experiences soldiers serving in Vietnam. M*A*S*H* did the same for the war in Korea. Forrest Gump also looks at the serving in the military as part of a character’s development. Tropic Thunder is an example of a film that parodies not the experiences of the servicemen and women but the military action films of the 1980’s like Rambo.