Thursday, November 20, 2014

What Happens to Comedy Stars?

by Patrick Bromley
"What kind of clown are you?"
"The crying on the inside kind, I guess." - Bill Murray, Quick Change

This week marks Jim Carrey's return to the top of the box office with Dumb and Dumber To, a sequel to Dumb & Dumber that reunites him with co-star Jeff Daniels and directors Peter and Bobby Farrelly nearly 20 years after the fact. It's a terrible movie, one that's ill-conceived on every level and stands as a reminder that Carrey hasn't made a funny film since the The Cable Guy in 1996; a case could be made for Liar Liar, which has its moments, and Me, Myself and Irene, but even that was 14 years ago. He's been a comedy star for 20 years and making terrible comedies for roughly 15 of those years. This is not uncommon for comedy stars.

Sitting through Dumb and Dumber To and trying to think of anything but a noose quietly slipping around my neck, something occurred to me. Why is it that the funniest films of nearly every major comedy star of the last 50 years come at the beginning of their movie careers? Note the distinction of "funniest," not "best." Bill Murray has made some great movies in the last decade, but most of those aren't all that hilarious. Except Hyde Park on Hudson. That shit's a gas.
Think about it: Steve Martin's funniest movies, The Jerk, The Man with Two Brains and Dead Men Don't Wear Plaid, are three of his first four starring vehicles (the fourth, an American remake of Pennies From Heaven, isn't a comedy). Jim Carrey's funniest are all among his first four or five efforts: Ace Ventura: Pet Detective, the original Dumb & Dumber, The Cable Guy. Adam Sandler was finished after Happy Gilmore, his second film as a comedy star. Most of Eddie Murphy's best came early on, too: 48 Hrs., Trading Places, Beverly Hills Cop. Chevy Chase left Saturday Night Live to make a handful of shitty movies and then had a run of good ones that included CaddyshackNational Lampoon's Vacation, Fletch, and Spies Like Us. Since then? Garbage.

Steve Martin is actually an exception, in that he made a couple of funny movies beyond his first few: Dirty Rotten Scoundrels came out almost a decade after he became a movie star, and the great Bowfinger came out another 11 years after that. Bill Murray, too, since Groundhog Day came out in 1993, nearly a decade after Ghostbusters, his last great comedy (you fans of Scrooged and What About Bob? can keep them). The theory doesn't apply to everyone, but more than it probably should. 

Why is the shelf life of a comedy star so brief? Here are a couple of theories:
Theory #1: Comedy is a young man's game. Despite a 52-year old Jim Carrey's recent success with Dumb and Dumber To, there are very few comedy stars who remain relevant in comedy into their 40s or 50s. Why is that? Because comedy depends on novelty. We laugh at that which is surprising and unexpected, which is why the first films of any comedy star tend to be the funniest. It feels fresh and new and different enough from the last guy we all got excited about; we haven't grown overly familiar with the joke or with their particular style of comedy yet. The schtick gets old quickly with a lot of comedy stars, but either no one tells them or they fall into the trap of not being able to do anything else. The result is a comic actor past his or her prime still trying to do the same old shit we once liked to see them do, but it's merely an echo of what formerly worked. For proof of this phenomenon, check out Jim Carrey in Yes Man (his age made that much more obvious by casting him opposite Zooey Deschanel -- almost 20 years his junior -- in the romantic lead) or Steve Martin doing a hip-hop minstrel show in Bringing Down the House
Theory #2: They want to be taken seriously as artists. Before too long, almost every comic actor gets an itch to do drama. Sometimes it's great and we get Lost in Translation or The Spanish Prisoner or The Truman Show. Sometimes it's not and we get The Razor's Edge or Grand Canyon or The Number 23. Comic actors often give some of the most interesting dramatic performances, perhaps because they're able to tap into a particular darkness (the same darkness that drives them to stand up on stage and beg an audience to laugh at them) or perhaps because they are actively working against our own preconceived notions about them. All of my favorite performances from Robin Williams were in dramatic films. Jim Carrey did good work in The Truman Show and Man on the Moon and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. Bill Murray and Eddie Murphy have both been nominated for Oscars for dramatic, not comedic, roles; Robin Williams even won one. The desire to flex their SERIOUS muscles usually changes the career trajectory of comedy stars; even if they do go back to doing comedy, it lacks the confidence and anarchy of the early stuff.
Theory #3: They want to make something their kids can see. Once a comedy star achieves a certain amount of success, it's less financially viable to continue making the kinds of edgy, R-rated or cult comedies on which he or she built a reputation. Why make a comedy only a few people can see when you can make a comedy everyone can see? This phenomenon typically gives way to a period of  "family" comedies: your Father of the Brides, your Clicks, your Flubbers, your Cops and Robbersons. It's not that these movies can't be funny; it's just that they usually aren't. Steve Martin is probably the biggest offender of this one, having starred in shit like Houseguest Housesitter and Bringing Down the House and TWO Cheaper by the Dozen movies and TWO Pink Panther remakes in addition to his Father of the Bride films (which, it should be said, are both fine). 

Oh, wait. I just remembered Eddie Murphy, star of two Nutty Professor remakes and A Thousand Words and The Adventures of Pluto Nash and Daddy Day Care and two Doctor Dolittle remakes and Meet Dave and Imagine That. The 2000s have been a nonstop barrage of shitty family comedies from Eddie Murphy. He's got Steve Martin beat. 
Theory #4: They no longer know -- or care -- what is funny. It's very likely that at a certain point, comedy stars lose touch with what used to make them laugh. Perhaps success has them too protective of their careers and they aren't willing to risk failure, which is what most great comedy needs to do -- it has to feel like a dangerous tightrope walk they are somehow getting away with performing. Perhaps they just assume that their fans have grown older with them and now have children and families and want something safe and forgettable they can rent on pizza night. This willingness to settle is not how art is made.

Or maybe they're Adam Sandler, who continues to make movies because fuck you. 

Seriously, Adam Sandler does not give a fuck what's funny. I think he still knows. Every few years he'll surround himself with people who actually are funny (like Judd Apatow, even if the results of Funny People don't quite bare that out) or genuinely brilliant artists like Paul Thomas Anderson and make something wonderful and idiosyncratic like Punch-Drunk Love. He's not a dummy. He just doesn't fucking care. Under his Happy Madison Productions, he makes movies so that he and his friends can get paid to go on vacation and fuck around together, which audiences have consistently subsidized by making them massive successes. His most recent effort, Blended (in which he got paid to go hang out with his friends in Africa and look at Drew Barrymore), underperformed despite being not as horrible as several of his last few movies. Maybe that means we'll be spared too many more of his cynical, mean-spirited and totally fucking boring "comedies." Maybe it will light a match under Adam Sandler and force him to try again -- to engage with the material and to find something that challenges himself and/or his audience.

Or maybe he'll just make Paul Blart Mall Cop 2 and Joe Dirt 2, both due out in 2015 from Happy Madison Productions!

21 comments:

  1. Correction, you meant "Housesitter" for Steve Martin and Goldie Hawn. "Houseguest" is the one with Sinbad and Phil Hartman.

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    1. Good catch. Reminds me, Sinbad isn't bringing like he used too either. :(

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  2. I was coincidentally watching The Razor's Edge for the first time yesterday. Kinda felt like I owed it to Mr.Murray after all these years. The score seemed to be the only element screaming "This is a drama!". I loved Brian Doyle M's performance. I still turned it off after 40 minutes though. Seriously, the score fucking sucks hard.

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    1. Just realized I just insulted the composer of "Needles and Pins"

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  3. Amen to this article. I think I have mentioned before that I really struggle with comedies these days. I don't think the "Jackass" generation comedies are funny. I didn't laugh once at "The Hangover" or other types of those films, "Scary Movie" type of films are pathetic, gross out, "how obnoxious can we be" type of films and the worst are the "hey, it's funny cause it's ironic!", like putting Jennifer Aniston in a film where she's a nymphomaniac with a potty mouth - HILARIOUS! Ugh.

    I could also just be a bitter son of a bitch with no sense of humor :)

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    1. What would you say was the last GREAT comedy?

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    2. Oh, and remember funny Tom Hanks?! That's when I loved him.

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    3. Wow, that is really tough! "Great" is really hard. For example - To my surprise, I laughed a lot at the "21 Jump Street" movie, thought it was in good taste and really well done (hated 22) but it is by no means a great comedy. Hmmmm... "Strange Brew" maybe?! Kidding (love it though!). Man, it's so hard to say. It's easy to say the last favorite comedy I saw was "Suburban Gothic" which is a horror hybrid (I think you or Riske reviewed it and liked it) but it's not "great" by any means. Forgive me because I'm going off of the top of my head and probably going to forget a ton (in which I would love to be reminded of) but "Get Shorty" is the one that comes to mind. The film cross cuts a lot of genres. Farina as Ray Bones is one of my favorite characters ever, the story was clever for the time and didn't resort to cliche's and Sonnenfeld was killing it as a comedy showing love for gangster films, classic Hollywood and sleeze at the same time.

      Shit - that was 1995. Okay - Apatow's "Funny People" I think is AMAZING! It's hard to say it's a comedy though because it's intentionally forcing bad jokes on the audience and asking them they really think it's funny.

      So - I think the answer is "The Royal Tenenbaums". It's ingenious. Story, acting, directing. All there. Not my favorite, I love it though. It could be the last GREAT comedy.

      I have to add that I thought "The Heat" was really funny, although that was my introduction to McCarthy and I soon realized that's her in every movie. I also loved "This is the End" and "The World's End"

      ...and, lastly, I think that "Safe Men" is one the most criminally underrated comedies of all time; in my top 10.

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    4. geeez...I spent a lot of time thinking and writing this and now that I re-read my own post, I'm still not sure. I need to be engaged to remember things that I'm sure I'm forgetting. What do you think is the last GREAT comedy, Patrick? Help me out here, man!

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    5. 21 Jump Street would have been my answer for this, too. I don't know if it's GREAT like that, but it's really well done, and one of the best comedies of recent times.

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    6. Oh, wait. This is the End, too. That movie is awesome.

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    7. See?! It's really hard to choose "great", but I'm glad I'm not the only one who liked those. When I think GREAT I think timeless, good story and well shot/acted. a-la "The Princess Bride", "Midnight Run", "A Shot in the Dark", "Raising Arizona" -...

      oh SHIT - maybe the right answer is "The Big Lebowski"!!

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    8. I don't think I can pick the last great comedy. I love Wet Hot American Summer, but surely there have been some since then. I think Superbad is really good. But GREAT?? I just don't know. Let's all agree it's Weekend at Bernie's and call it a day.

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  4. I agree with 80% of this list but it falls apart in the top 20 a bit for me. Notice the lack of recent comedies which is a reflection of this article.

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    1. According to that list the best comedies of the last five years are Four Lions (2010), In the Loop (2009), The Hangover (2009), and Bridesmaids (2011).

      They have Anchorman (2004), Team America (2004), Borat (2006), and Shaun of the Dead (2004) in the top twenty of all time. Others from the past ten years are Napoleon Dynamite (2004), Hot Fuzz (2007), Little Miss Sunshine (2006), Mean Girls (2004), and Dodgeball (2004).

      With that, I guess I would second the motion that The Royal Tenenbaums (2001) is the last great comedy. Otherwise it's back to 1999.

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  5. The funniest movie I've seen this year was Species II.

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    1. I remember being really upset by that movie. It was really mean-spirited. Besides being hilarious, of course. Maybe I'm remembering it wrong.

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  6. Peter Sellers might be an exception to this rule. Though you could make an argument his earlier movies were better as movies (from "The Ladykillers" to his Kubrick movies and the first two "Pink Panther" movies) in the 70's he was still doing "Prisoner of Zenda" and funny "Panther" sequels ("Pink Panther Strikes Again" is the funniest in the series IMO, and that's his 4th "Panther" flick). He capped it off near the end of his life (and thus career) with "Being There," which is a masterpiece of comedic understatement that got him as Oscar nomination.

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  7. Jesus thats really hard to think about. The last I really truely laughed hard was probably Life of Brian. And Fawlty towers. Damn thats a long time ago. There must of been something since though nothing is coming to mind

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