Where Have All The Laughs Gone?

Having recently become a second year student at university, I have been overcome by sense of nostalgia. On my trip of nostalgia, I’ve been thinking back to the funnier moments and most of these have been linked to films. Films such as Blazing Saddles, Airplane! and the Naked Gun trilogy all formed a key part of my travels through puberty and indeed, most of my everyday humour derives from these films. However, as Screen Editor of Exepose, we were recently informed of the upcoming release of Vampires Suck. I’m not angry with the trailer, simply disappointed. Why is this being labeled as comedy? Where have all the laughs gone?

It is very easy to sit upon a high horse and simply sneer at new films trying to be funny and claim how “they were much funnier in my day”. However, to a great extent, I would be right. Comedy is a cornerstone of film with the likes of the great Buster Keaton and Charlie Chaplin entertaining audience from the early 1910s, 1920s and 1930s. Their comedy was not simply Norman Wisdom without sound; it was delicate, caring and heart felt. Whilst full of great slapstick, The Great Dictator dared to poke fun at the unpokeable. The Nazi regime was an extremely taboo subject but Chaplin with subtlety and outrageous hilarity, making one of the best comedy films of all time. Today, a recurring trend of simple slapstick with gross jokes cuts off any possible connection with its audience. As shown by the early works of the silent film kings, a character we can care for is a character we can laugh with and characters placed upon celluloid for us simply to take the piss out of, it simply removes the fun out of it.

Today, society is a miserable and complex system. Therefore, the cinematic audience has greater demands than ever from their comedies looking for laughs by barrelful. With this in mind, filmmakers must now present us with a main protagonist who we can laugh with but others who we can laugh at. As shown with films such as Forgetting Sarah Marshall and Pirates of the Carribean, however, the filmmakers and the audience are all in on the joke.

However, the problem with these films is that they cannot define the difference between characters and objects. Having capitalized on the current popularity of pop culture, Michael Jackson became target number one prior to his death in 2009. Indeed, I watched Scary Movie 4 the other day where it featured a joke about Michael Jackson stealing children and it was an extremely awkward experience. They used Michael Jackson as an object, not as a character meaning they used minimal effort to put this “joke” on celluloid. They were looking for the laugh instead of telling us a joke.

So, have all the laughs gone? No. Indeed, many leap to this shortsighted conclusion based solely upon the Scary Movie and Vampires Suck franchises. I found these films terrible and just not hugely entertaining. However, my declaration of these films being completely unfunny is simply my opinion. I’m a 19-year-old student studying History at Exeter University but what if I was a 12 year old, buzzed on iPhone’s and Facebook groups, would I not find this film hilarious? Hopefully not. Indeed, as shown by their returning dwindling box office returns, it seems this franchise could be soon be gone for good.

I’ll admit it is easy to look through rose tinted glasses at the past but there is still comedy gold within the film industry at the moment, it’s just harder to find them. In 2009, over 550 films were released meaning over 10 new films a week hit our screens meaning that comedy gold is going to be harder to find. In the last 18 months, we have laughed along to Zombieland, I Love You, Philip Morris, A Serious Man and many more.

Nevertheless, it is noticeable that filmmakers are releasing more bad and lazy films than ever before and more effort is needed to put into these films and provide better laughs. Vampires Suck may be sucking some comedy’s soul out but there are plenty of others out there willing to keep it alive.