Seven and a half months and 30 films ago, I began a mission to watch all the best comedies my sheltered childhood, lack of cable, and pop-culture cluelessness had prevented me from seeing until now. I think it’s safe to say I’ve accomplished my goal, in some measure. Not that I’ve seen every comedy, or even every great comedy, but I think I can safely say I’ve seen the same funny movies any healthy kid of my generation can reasonably be expected to have seen. Of course there are countless films I still have yet to see in order to consider myself any kind of authority on comedy films, [...]
If it gives you any idea how inside-out my movie viewing track record was as a child, the only Dudley Moore movie I had ever seen until this week was 1988's Santa Claus: The Movie. You know, the one where candy canes make you fly for some reason. Oh, you don’t remember that? Neither does anyone else.
I'm glad to discover that Moore had a career besides that film. Who knew? And seeing how there's an Arthur remake coming, I felt like this was a perfect opportunity to check out the source material, a 1981 film about a drunken millionaire who must decide between marrying a girl his family [...]
The 80s were a great time to be a kid. High-concept comedies and sci-fi movies, loud, parent-maddening music, classic video games and cable TV. Compared to other decades, kids’ entertainment was unabashedly childish, insane, colorful, loud and ridiculous. Now that plopping your kids in front of the TV for hours on end while you do something else is sort of frowned upon, children’s entertainment has been forced to appeal, with widely varying success, to parents as well as kids, spawning a tiny amount of the best entertainment in the industry (Pixar, I’m looking at you) and a truckload of the very worst (insert your favorite squeakuel here). Gone are [...]
I guess I just never got Pee-Wee Herman. As a kid his show kind of creeped me out. I didn't and still don't really get what's funny about him. The idea of a wide-eyed, unflappably optimistic kid in a grown-up's body, overcoming all obstacles with his infectiously silly energy, is a great bit in theory, but in execution I think Pee-Wee always rang false (and, as I said, a little terrifying) to me. I think for a bit like that to hold up, you need to commit to the character in a way Pee-Wee just never did. There was always something external, something dark and cynical about it that [...]
Seeing as how it’s Women In Comedy week here at Splitsider, I thought it would be appropriate to watch a comedy from a female writer and/or director. Fortunately I’ve been staunchly gender-neutral in my gross negligence of cinema’s best comedies throughout my life, so there were plenty to choose from. But which one? A League of Their Own? Too obvious. Juno? Too recent. Clueless? Tailor-made for my generation, well-regarded among friends and colleagues, seen by almost everyone but me. Just right.
First, Clueless is a great movie, and very funny. It’s also a movie that is designed to make anyone born between 1975 and 1985 feel stupidly giddy. It [...]
