A.V. Club's "The 50 best comedies since 2000"

Josie & The Pussycats fandom seems like a time capsule for treating fun pop (music and TV-wise at least) much more seriously than ILX currently does.

I agree that the boy-band song was spot-on.

Biggest lol on the list is lol @ no super troopers

I thought of something that isn't on the list

What We Do In The Shadows is excellent.

Not much love here for some reason.

ILX didn't much like Flight of The Conchords either though did we?

Sigh... in retrospect it really does seem like the '00s were a golden age of mainstream film comedy. Nowadays a clever idea for a comedy is remaking Mean Girls. Sad.

Lots of comedies not even listed here better than what we get these days: The Hangover, Harold and Kumar Go To White Castle, 2 Days in Paris, Elf, Dodgeball, Forgetting Sarah Marshall, Zach and Miri Make a Porno, Napoleon Dynamite, Mamma Mia!, Meet the Parents, My Big Fat Greek Wedding, etc..

what exactly do we get these days? it feels like they don't make these kinds of movies at all anymore. unless there's a bunch of direct-to-Netflix stuff with Adam Sandler or whatever

They're pretty much all direct to streaming now, with the two most recent exceptions being Barbie and No Hard Feelings (which ended up on Netflix like six weeks after it opened anyway).

You Hurt My Feelings isn't exactly a guffaw-style comedy, but it was worth watching

Holofcener is possibly the secret best Comedy director of the modern era.

Add me to the three posters who lobbied for Adventureland.

Honestly I don't miss "let's get 20 takes of Will Ferrell and stitch it together afterwards" (for all that I love, for example, Zoolander and him in it)

From a dumb list of "best comedies of 2023", along with the ones already mentioned, there's Are you there, God?, Bottoms, Joy Ride, Cocaine Bear, Flux Gourmet - Poor Things is out just now, there's Argylle and Wicked Little Letters and Drive-Away Dolls dues later this year - the distinction made by Morbius about character comedies vs jokebook comedies is solid, and there's a lack of "I went in and was in shocked laughter for 90 minutes" (though Bottoms is closest), but again I'm fine with that.

And yeah of course something as hard to audience-size as comedy is getting less time in cinemas in 2024.

I was probably one of the Josie voters, dlh otm both that it slows down towards the end (when it decides needs to be a romcom) and that it's a great corporate dystopia. I suspect that seeing it at #48 on the original list and WHAS at #1 would have affected that, and seeing it on top by one vote is sweet - absent such enjoyable pettiness, I'd probably pick Walk Hard.

Tbf, they didn't just remake Mean Girls, they made a movie based on the musical based on the movie. Not that you would know it from the trailer, tho.

Would add Barb and Star Go to Vista del Mar as a good broad comedy of recent vintage. It wasn't a theatrical release but I think it was supposed to be if not for the pandemic.

Bottoms seemed to split the room pretty sharply. So yeah, perhaps the heir to WHAS

I remember Bad Santa being flat and not particularly funny, weird top pick.

I just couldn't believe how bad the Santa was

and then he got badder!

I feel like the absurdist, gags-upon-gags sort of comedy in the lineage of Airplane! & Mel Brooks has been missing from contemporary cinema since at least the Anchorman/Step Brothers days and it makes me sad. I love that garbage. No emphasis on story or character, no attempt at biting satire, just an endless buffet of escalating dumb jokes

I appreciated BASEketball for that reason

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9B6ck7O6BBU

Bottoms had a not-insignificant quantity of that very brand of humor imo

I'll have to check it out! I thought it was more in the "serious" social-satire bracket for some reason.

Gonna ride for 'Barb & Star' and 'Popstar: Never Stop Never Stopping' and that's really about it for our post-Farrell laffaverse

^style boy for life

I thought it was more in the "serious" social-satire bracket for some reason

There's what feels like a maybe obligatory amount of that in there too, but the movie's heart never really seems in that aspect

Barb and Star was wonderful.

i saw theater camp on a plane recently and imo it was a really solid endless-cascade-of-jokes movie that was also clearly angling for wet hot american summer cult status (bottoms seems more “improv” than either to me, tho i also enjoyed it)

oh my god, Theater Camp was amazing. it's enjoyable for all audiences but anybody who's done the theater kid experience will probably lose their shit.

the bit that went:

"I know this is an incredibly stressful process and it can kinda feel like life and death. It's designed to feel that way

"If you drop a line, if you crack, if you're a little flat, what does that say about you?"

slayed me

the making up the song on the spot part was great too.

and the kid auditioning with Better Now lmao

i’m not a theater person at all and thus approached the film with trepidation, but i lol’d at almost every joke! had to respect it

It definitely did feel like WHAS in many ways, you're right there

Bash brothers

Yeah, I'd say Bottoms is more working in 'modern society' than with much of a message about it (thinking particularly here of the "to me, being an ally is..." scene). It's basically a horndog hustle movie - Rachel Sennott is giving Peak Bill Murray Energy for a lot of it. Of course, two women in a horndog hustle movie now play differently from two guys 40 years ago, but that's modern society!

Moonrise Kingdom and WALL•E are probably my two favorites but they weren't included.

checked did i note the absence of super troopers previously, ok guess my work here is done

I feel like the absurdist, gags-upon-gags sort of comedy in the lineage of Airplane! & Mel Brooks has been missing from contemporary cinema since at least the Anchorman/Step Brothers days and it makes me sad. I love that garbage. No emphasis on story or character, no attempt at biting satire, just an endless buffet of escalating dumb jokes

― feed me with your chips (zchyrs), Tuesday, January 16, 2024 10:06 AM (four hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

If you need a reminder of why this genre was likely rendered permanently radioactive, do a quick google for 'Jason Friedberg and Aaron Seltzer'.

i see WHAS noted as a cult comedy by americans and i note once again that 'cult' in this context means "no jokes and no good line reads and no good performances' and honestly that's fine i spose

That can sucks its own dick, dude.

which movie called Wet Hot American Summer did you watch that had no jokes?

britishes and Irishers don't get Withnail and I either.

correct

every performance in Wet Hot American Summer is amazing wtf

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i6YR1EvOS78

I've seen a few British comedies. Brave flex there, darraghmac.

xps fair point on Friedburg & Seltzer, those guys have a lot to answer for :(

I started watching Barb & Star a while back and recall liking it, so it's due for a revisit. I'll put Theater Camp on the list too

can we maybe pull back on calling ppl british as a reflex

historically we have shot ppl for it and im not sure laziness will be accepted as an excuse if i start