Baby Nah Nah
Sorry… but comedy is harder than it looks… even for pros who are strapping on the directing jodhpurs for the first time.
Forgetting Sarah Marshall was a terrific idea with some interesting talent, desperately in need of a director and a producer. And now, Baby Mama is a terrific idea with two extremely compelling actresses… in desperate need of a producer to tell the writer that, 1) he can’t direct and 2) that the script needs work on the story level and 3) just because Mike Myers improved a lot of Wayne’s World does not mean that Amy Pohler can save his story problems by making faces, even if she gets laughs.
Universal is smartly selling only the first act of Baby Mama, because if they told you where it was going, you wouldn’t show up. People want to see the uptight working woman learn about life from the wild white trash chick. But someone told writer/”director” Mike McCullers that the big heartwarming turn that is an old tradition on these films would be a good idea. But it misses by a mile. The hard part is that fightingthe studio “make the characters more likeable” thing was right too. But the “not obvious” choices must be elegant. It’s just that making warmth work from the bones of a farce is a mile tall order… few make it… as is proven again here.
We’re getting more and more of these near-miss comedies in light of the Apatow success. And I find it wildly frustrating, as in both of these cases, a better movie was sitting there, waiting for a bright, critical voice pushing the writers and first-time directors to be more demanding of themselves. (There is a reason why Apatow hires unexpected, but experienced and hungry directors for so many of the films he produces.)
What Heat should have typed is; “Forgetting Sarah Marshall is a terrific film with some interesting talent workinh with truly inspired director and a producer.” Do not be hating, sir. It does not suit you. Unless it’s Baby Momma. A flick that demonstrates that Amy Pohler is best when working with… her husband.
FSM is the hardest I’ve laughed at any movie in who knows how long. I’ll concede that there’s some awkward editing and sloppy filmmaking — a few scenes seem to be missing entitrely (based on dialogue bits that refer to moments that don’t exist), supporting characters appear and disappear at random, sometimes never to come back.
But in terms of big laughs, I’d put it against 40YOV and way ahead of KU any day.
The problem I have with these posts is that you seem to treat your subjective opinion as an objective truth. As it stands, FSM has 85% on the Tomatometer, so I wouldn’t exactly call it a “near-miss” at an objective level.
Although, how can opinions be objective, so I guess my argument doesn’t make any sense either.
Here’s my criteria for a comedy. Did it make me laugh at a good ratio to run time? If yes no complaints. If no move on.
i hear that, banzai, but i want more from a movie, especially as i get older and apparently grumpier, as movies don’t seem to make me laugh as much as back in the day; remember coming out of ‘trading places’ or ‘caddyshack’ back in the day (bloody hell, some of you probably weren’t even an embryo then), and to this day the dvd makes you laugh your ass off? i want that.
i’m easily amused and recent comedies make me laugh in places (like the guy that accidentally takes acid or whatever it was at ‘death at a funeral’, he was hilarious, or the cringe-inducing humour of ‘borat’) but i want to FEEL something, i want to be SATISFIED… i came out of ‘little miss sunshine’ with a big smile on my face, and ‘bad santa’ is pretty fucking priceless, but i think making good comedy is a bitch and they are few and far between of late
I agree, Leah. Borat was funny, but I never need to see it a second time, because there wasn’t anything in it that really sank in or had any depth, to me. Something like 40 Year Old Virgin, on the other hand, or Shaun of the Dead I find to be a lot more satisfying.
shaun of the dead! amen, brother, an absolute classic. i am officially going senile.
actually, the gears in my head got to whirring, thinking about really top shelf comedy in, say, the last five years or so, what are some faves out there? have i missed some real pearlers? my list is so short (royal tennenbaums, shaun, bad santa, lmsunshine..) but i refer again to the last sentence of the previous paragraph in my defence…
I’d add Sideways, A Mighty Wind, and Mean Girls (which is a lot better when you can remove yourself from the Lindsay Lohan media circus).
I just caught Walk Hard the other day, and couldn’t stop laughing. It also made the Dewey Cox character believable in an unbelievable movie. It’s a shame it didn’t do better in the theaters (a terrible release date, too many movies out all ready, and an R rated comedy on Christmas? yikes.), but I predict it’s going to be a favorite on DVD.
i’m hanging my head in shame, muttering three little words: school of rock. raise your goblet to the god of rock! i watch that movie with the boy, and copious laughter and joy ensues without fail.
sideways, of course, a bitter-sweet gem of a movie, gives me a glow like lmsunshine; i’m ashamed to say pretty much everything i know about wine i learned from ‘sideways’, and to this bloody day i will not drink any fucking merlot! seriously. i like ‘mean girls’ but i suspect that might be due to my weird rachel mcadams fixation, if i fancied women she’d be my cup of tea (must rent ‘mighty wind’, i’ve never seen it, and the previews of ‘cox’ looked funny, i’ll get that too when i comes out).
there must be others, that can’t be it… where’s our modern day ‘after hours’? the next ‘blazing saddles’? who will save us with laughter?
Television’s been a lot funnier than most theatrical comedies. A single of episode of “30 Rock” probably has better laughs than the entirely of Baby Mama. And almost any episode of “The Office” from the first couple of seasons is definitely going to herniate me before 99% of what I’ve seen in a theater in the last three or four years. The Tenacious D show from HBO is still light years funnier than The Pick of Destiny.
But there have been SOME greats out there: Kung Fu Hustle & Shaolin Soccer, Shaun of the Dead & Hot Fuzz, Superbad, Accepted, Juno, Little Miss Sunshine, Ghost Rider (unintentionally, but still funny), Orange County, Dodgeball…
I think you can only expect two or three genuine laugh-your-lungs-out comedies in a given year, and MAYBE one of these is going to be that special kind of film that’ll stay great forever. But I don’t mind if a movie is only great the one time either. Borat is the perfect example of that kind of comedy, and there’s nothing wrong with that (even though I haven’t seen it a second time to test that hypothesis). One laugh wonders don’t get the credit they deserve when they get compared to those energizer bunny types all the time.
But then, comedy isn’t the only genre with this “problem”. I still haven’t seen something that comes close to matching the experience I had watching Serenity; and it’s going to be a lonnnnnnnng time before another movie like Once is going to come along.
Comedies like Trading Places, Stripes, A Fish Called Wanda, and The In-Laws will always hold a special place in my heart for me, and it is hard to find stuff on that level in recent years – I think the main reasoning is editing. With the exception of Stripes (while the last act was entertaining, the Winnebago thing did go on too long), those films were much tighter and ended when they needed, to end.
I love the Apatow ouvre, but most of his films (with the exception of Superbad) are 15 to 20 minutes too long. I know, it’s becoming an old argument, but it even held with Forgetting Sarah Marshall.
In today’s marketplace, it doesn’t even make sense to release comedies in theaters, this way – it’s so easy to just save the excess improv stuff for the “extended, unrated director’s cut” on DVD. Keep it to 90 minutes and just save the other 45 minutes for the DVD release – what’s the harm in that?
I did not have the pleasure of seeing 40 Year Old Virgin in theaters and the first time was the “extended cut” on DVD, which was only available through Netflix at the time – I was intially very disappointed. It was funny and all, but I was an hour into this thing and he hadn’t even gone on a date with Catherine Keener, yet.
Then I saw the theatrical version on HBO several months, later, and even though the original version was still too long, it was much better.
There HAS to be more to a successful comedy than just how many belly laughs it can provide. You need to have more meat on the bone. After all, Big Momma’s House is hysterically funny despite being crap, while Shakespeare In Love would stand a better chance of raising the dead than raising a laugh. Both are comedies. Which is the better movie? Great comedies need strong characters and filmmaking just like any other genre. Groundhog Day, Juno, Sideways, 40YOV, Knocked Up, even Talladega Nights, all fit that criteria for me.
“i suspect that might be due to my weird rachel mcadams fixation, if i fancied women she’d be my cup of tea”
I don’t know why, but that made me roffle.
David, I tried to find your email address but couldn’t – and I searched all over the internet to find out who you are p so I hope you read this. I was at the Trebeca film festival the other night and some really gross looking guy – he was short, fat looked like a cross between a human and a frog, was talking about you with other people and saying somne REALLY nasty stuff that I won’t get into here. He may work in the business. We found out his name was “Roger” but couldn’t get his last name. It was INCREDIBLY defamatory. Please email me moodring38@yahoo.com
Track down THE IMPOSTORS, a Stanley Tucci/Campbell Scott farce that made me laugh harder than almost any other feature in the decade since.
i remember ‘the impostors’, isn’t oliver platt in it as well? yet another great funny from the days of yore (the 90’s)… i’ll add it to my list of flicks to hunt down in the rental isles
Chick Flick … no
Comic book movie … yes
Franchise … yes
Name-Checking to promote movie … yes
Oscar-Whoring to promote film … yes
Remake … yes
Sequel … yes
TV-based movie … yes
Such must be the worldview of those who post here.
Chucky, why don’t you please elaborate on what on Earth you’re talking about?
Granted, there are a lot of men here, so chick flicks are going to be less popular than comic book movies; otherwise, it sounds like all you’re saying is “People in these here parts sure have shitty taste!” and I think if that’s what you want to say, you should just say it, or not.
Baby Mama and FSM, to my eyes, both suffer from forced, rickety plotting, but both have incredibly appealing performances and big, frequent laughs. So I’ve been recommending them to other people.
The greatest comedy (and perhaps film)of this decade is Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. Not a lot of guffaws but it has such a wonderfully desperate gonzo feel to it.
About a Boy is also up there, its not as sunny as the other Working Title comedies and that undercurrent of depression keeps the sacherinne at bay. The scripter for that went on to direct Pieces of April and Dan in Real Life, both of which are about sad uncomfortable people and had me laughing my ass off.