Comedy Is Dead

Part Deux: Tag, You're It

Folks, I’m no philosopher, but I know comedy. It comes in all shapes and sizes; a variety of sorts ranging from smart to silly and loud to subtle. Comedy provides a fresh breath of life through humor in this often humorless existence. Comedy is one of the staples of cinematic therapy. And it is, perhaps dead.

  It’s also rather unfair of me to propose this argument in the direction of a harmless picture like Tag, but having sat through it I’m reminded as to why I don’t really watch comedies anymore (at least not new ones). 

Most of them are INCREDIBLY lazy.

... Not like the way they used to make ‘um 

BACK IN MAH DAY!

*grabs old-man reading glasses*
*takes puff of pipe*

   

  Nostalgia will be the death of me and having grown up off the heels of 80s flicks ranging from the likes of Mel Brooks to National Lampoon, comedy just felt like it was thriving. 

  

The days of David Zuckerman’s Airplane! and The Naked Gun were untouchable, albeit inevitably numbered, and for a glimpse of time they dominated the world of genuine slapstick.

  You look at a flick like Ghostbusters or Caddyshack and the 80s comedy goes so far beyond them simply featuring a cult favorite comedian like Bill Murray. Every beat of the script relied on some sort of slapstick joke; a setup and a punch line that worked regardless of the mechanisms of the chemistry of the cast.

Though, to be fair I did grow up in the 90s and was spoiled by brilliantly goofy actor-driven vehicles ranging from Adam Sandler to Jim Carrey. 

  It seemed like a much simpler time where slapstick was enforced by random spouts of humor that was incoherent to the story or even the characters; a chaotic sequence of events and jokes that served no other purpose than to make us laugh. It was an era that gave folks like Sandler a legitimate excuse to be a babbling, shouting idiot and allowed Carrey to break for an entire 'Cuban Pete' musical number.

  It was a time of peak comedy for SNL stars which ultimately gave birth to the sharknado of the vehicle-comedian king that is Will Ferrell. Comedy was no longer exploding from genre or jokes, rather than the absurdity of the leading man.

  There's a reason a movie as silly as Anchorman resonates so profoundly with audiences beyond college bros and slackers. Of course it's not everyone's cup of tea but between the cast, the soundtrack, the one-liners, the outrageous result of the network fight, and the outright absurdity of the film's off-kilter behavior, Adam McKay and Ferrell's first pairing together makes for one of the most brilliant embellishments of absurdist humor since the days of David Zuckerman.

  Of course one could make the argument that "smart comedy" has always been subtly parading as the dark horse of the 2000s, whether that dark horse be really dark i.e. In Bruges, or whether enough time has resonated to admit that Shaun of the Dead truly is the most brilliant satire ever made, but we're not even talking about smart comedy here. 

  On the contrary, (if you're with it) Step Brothers is one of the laugh-out-loud funniest movies ever made. The key isn't always wit, rather than legitimate humor, even if it feels inspired by the borderline mentally handicapped.

  That said, if there is any credit due to shaking things up in the recent age of dying comedy, the conversation can't go without mention of the women.

   In recent years women have proved time and again that they are long overdue to be deserving of the same comedy platform as men, best example going to cult favorite Bridesmaids.

  The women of SNL have always fared as being funny but as of recent it feels like a new wave of leading ladies in cinema are slowly earning their place. Even amidst the terrible female-centric films that are churned out year after year; even when nobody asked for the Lady-Ghostbusters of 2016, at least the women are finally being recognized on a platform they deserve.

  But even with the saving graces, the 10s have been a weird time for comedy. With Borat being more than a decade behind us, living in a post-Appatow renaissance we look to outrageous satire like The Lonely Island’s 2016 Popstar, or Taika Waititi’s What We Do In The Shadows for spurts of brilliant mockery; Films that take subject matter be it celebrities or vampires and spin them in a cleverly unique and self aware direction. 

  Even Waititi’s Hunt For The Wilderpeople is one of the more witty and heartfelt comedies in recent memory. The biggest travesty to brilliant comedies such as these is that no one ever hears about them, leaving them to the dust for inevitable cult followings years down the road. 


  As for really recent humor, the fact that Death of Stalin stands out more than nearly any other comedy film of the last two years is telling, albeit the minds of Veep are brilliant no matter what garbage they're competing against.

  The reality is that we’re currently living in an age of Kevin Hart vehicles and Amy Schumer throwaways. Not to say that today’s comedians don’t live up to Carrey, or Robin Williams or *insert comedian icon here* but in 2018, the comedy films themselves have just become straight up LAZY. 

  Adam Sandler’s career has been a legitimate TRAINWRECK for more than a decade now. Sure some of his post-Anger-Management movies get a bum rap, but sitting through most Sandler comedies today are like sitting through new episodes of Family Guy. The jokes have become so rotten; so grossly far and away from what made the humor so legitimately hilarious in the first place that almost any trace of brilliance from the vehicle is gone.

  I watch previews for movies like Sex Tape and Daddy’s Home 2 and I literally gag. You look at movies like Girls Trip, Rough Night and Bad Mom’s Christmas and you can’t help but foam at the mouth from having an aneurysm, not because you know they’re all going to be dog-shit movies just from watching the trailers, but because more or less these are all the exact same movie.

  A movie like Tag isn’t simply a “terrible movie,” rather than just another entry in the void that is the humorless genre of what’s calling itself comedy. The movie’s existence proves the entire point that comedy is dead, and Tag is one of the BETTER of the shitty comedies! 

  The crammed cast of R-rated shenanigans will remind audiences of 2011’s Horrible Bosses, but where that film brilliantly juggled three relatable bone heads vs. three despicably hilarious villains, Tag pins four dudes who are basically the same person vs. Jeremy Renner, who’s basically just playing Hawkeye.

  The issue isn’t that the movie is entirely swallowing its existence in the fact that it’s based on a true story of grown-ass adults who have been playing the same game of tag for over thirty years, it’s the problem that the mechanisms of the movie just don’t work, nor do they even seem like they want to work. 

  As an “ensemble piece,” this movie truly belongs to no one. You could chock up the “emotional” bits to a balance between say, the Ed Helms and Jeremy Renner characters. But even then it’s just a last minute wrench thrown in to give some heart to an otherwise cold, irrelevant movie.

  And sure you could say one is being too harsh on the movie since “it is just a comedy after all,” but there was a time we could simply laugh at a comedy and ask no further questions. The lack of actual humor has me asking MANY.

  Are Jake Johnson, Jon Hamm and Hannibal Buress ALL supposed to be the same person? Save for their individual quirks they literally all have the same personality traits and motivation. Even Hannibal who is far and away the funniest of the bunch can’t help but fall into contrived character development. 

  Did we only include Isla Fisher and Rashida Jones as a means for this to not be a strict sausage fest?

  WHY DID WE NEED THIS MOVIE?

  Is the film truly as un-funny as I’m making it out to be? Have I just become a miserable old bastard, desensitized to all things joyful and pure? Am I unable to enjoy silly things with each film I watch? Should I just let a sweet, little movie like Tag be, and continue to wallow in my misery and question my existence? Are we about to get really dark? No, no my friends. Now is not the place. This is not that film. I will not give credit to a thread like this.

  In the end, the movie is fine. It’s certainly not very good, not even by comedic standards, but in general it’s fine. There are scarce moments of good comedy here, mostly where Renner (who’s supposed to be some tag-winning genius) deflects and dominates his friends as they attempt to “get him,” while mentally narrating his every move in slow motion action sequences (think Downey Jr’s Sherlock Holmes), and it’s moments like these that are legitimately hilarious.

  The fact that the post-credits footage of the real-life friends playing tag is better than the entire movie itself is really telling. Maybe it’s just me but there’s something about seeing grown-ass men in their 50s running around shopping malls, disguised as old ladies with walkers, jumping out and tackling their friends, that’s truly heartwarming. 

  Perhaps it’s this very notion that inspired someone to make a movie about all this nonsense. Did we need THIS movie? Hell no. Would this whole slew of shenanigans have worked better had it been a comedy-documentary about the real life friends? Absolutely.

  In closing, comedy might not be dead after all. Movies like Tag certainly don’t claim the defense of a worthwhile life for what we’re calling “comedy” these days but hey, we could do worse.

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*10 points to grown-ass adults who still know how to have some damn fun in this miserable world - You people give me hope

*5 points to Hannibal