Modern comedies look more like sitcoms these days. Here's why they should look like movies again.
That first red-band trailer for the upcoming R-rated comedy Joy Ride was a great example of a well-made comedy trailer.
Why Do Modern Comedy Movies Look So Bad? Comedies have often thrived because of visuals. The earliest silent movie comedians, like Buster Keaton or Charlie Chaplin, built their gags entirely around images. Even later comedians that leaned heavily on witty remarks, like the Marx Brothers, still featured sharp visual gags and competent cinematography.
Meanwhile, comedy stars like Adam Sandler and Will Ferrell had to churn out projects annually, which ended up depleting the visual creativity in their works. There’s no time to linger on fun visual gags or unique camerawork when hitting a release date is what’s important. Compare the vibrant production design and very precise camera movements in Sandler’s The Wedding Singer to the vacant imagery seen in Grown Ups 13 years later.
There also appears to be a complete disinterest in making comedy movies look “cinematic,” for lack of a better term. The default look now is overly-lit shows with little imagination in the way of staging, as if anything more visually audacious will immediately repel audiences. There’s no sense of theatricality in how gags are arranged or delivered, they’re just flatly presented to the viewer to evoke “realism.
There Is Hope For Modern Comedies Thankfully, a handful of modern comedies offer viewers some hope that this genre isn’t doomed to look lifeless. The 2018 feature Game Night, for instance, was a very well-shot piece of work that understood the comedic value of juxtaposing professional camerawork with humorous situations and dialogue.
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