A lot of modern comedy movies are bad. Egregiously, embarrassingly, painfully bad. And no, the explanation for this isn’t Adam Sandler; it’s that a lot of comedy filmmakers are no longer really “filmmakers” at all.
Over the years, the comedy genre has been boiled down to the basic concept of, well, jokes. A movie is now simply a means of conveying as much funny dialogue as possible, occasionally accompanied by pratfalls, but without much in the way of cinematic trickery or smart visual gags.
In this video, Vimeo user Tony Zhou explains what we’re missing and why, using Edgar Wright movies as an example of comedy done right.
After watching this, you’ll probably understand why Edgar Wright inspires such slavish devotion among his fans. You’ll also start feeling a little frustrated next time you watch one of the many SNL actor comedies that come out each year, because most of them make all the mistakes listed in this video: boring cinematography, unimaginative sound design… Basically, a total lack of the kind of background detail you see in virtually every other genre. As this video puts it, “Don’t be satisfied with shit that’s less inventive than Vine.”
This video also couldn’t have come at a worse time. After eight years of working on an Ant-Man adaptation for Marvel Studios, Edgar Wright recently quit the movie due to a creative conflict. With an as-yet-unnamed director taking over from Wright, it looks like Ant-Man may wind up as a considerably less entertaining movie than fans were hoping.
Screengrab via Tony Zhou/Vimeo