Inspired by the uninspiring “Mr. and Mrs. Smith”–
What’s the meanest funny comedy ever made? And/or the funniest mean comedy?
A short list, off the top of my head:
Happiness
Little Murders
Where’s Poppa?
Prizzi’s Honor
Unfaithfully Yours
Shoah
After Hours; King of Comedy; Goodfellas
Smile — and The Candidate? A shout-out to Michael Ritchie, in his heyday
Being There
Okay, one of those is a gag. A special honorable mention for W.C. Fields. I can’t say all of his films really hold up as mean/funny narrative, but he’s perhaps the model protagonist. In “It’s a Gift” (I think it was “It’s a Gift”) he made me laugh as hard as I’ve ever laughed at a film just by turning to a co-worker and muttering “I hate you.” No punchline, no set-up, no shtick–just “I hate you.” Now that’s comedy.
Speaking of Michael Ritchie in his hey day (c’mon Cheerleader Murdering Mom is great): Prime Cut will be released tomorrow on DVD. Shoah? Ouch! I might include The War of the Roses or Throw Momma From the Train.
no coen bros.? “barton fink” is pretty mean and pretty funny.
For those of you who’ve never watched Faces of Death or the CBS Evening News in my presence, Reynolds is referring to my outbursts of joy when human spines fall from landing airplanes or professional bicyclists are eaten by bears.
–Happiness: Yes. Yes it does make my laugh. As does Welcome to the Dollhouse. Yet from reading a longish interview with Solondz in the Believer ( http://www.believermag.com/issues/200502/interview_solondz.php ), I wonder how “mean” he actually intends his work to be. And while I do find much to love in Happiness, I don’t believe that it falls into the same “mean/cruel” axis that Reynolds originally intended to come up with here.
I will let Solondz defend himself here in that interview; but will note that he confirms many of my suspicions about his intent in his films: He is trying his best to write about human experience; and in a less satirical way than any of the other films Reynolds carelessly lumps in with this one (or Dollhouse).
Yet it was Reynolds who realized the defining theme of that film before I did: Rejection. Everyone in there gets rejected, including the son by the father. I’ve heard people misquote that section of dialogue between the father and son (quoting it as if it was Caddyshack) at parties, and it’s obvious they’ve missed perhaps the biggest unifying theme in the film.
I’ve also seen it happen in The Sweet Hereafter where many people who love the movie completely miss the sly but undeniable incest going on between father and daughter.
Maybe we can set up a new topic where people misinterpret messages and unambiguous plot points in films.
In any case, I can – strangely – not come up with a single additional and favorite mean film off the top of my head, except for perhaps Withnail & I, which is quite mean, in addition to its many other fine qualitites.
Misinterpreted messages:
My mother thought that War of the Roses ended with a reconciliation.
And I once knew someone who thought that Being There‘s ending was an affirmation of Chance’s christlike qualities, an affirmation of his true integrity and worth as a potential politician.
I like the point you make about Happiness–or rather the point I made about it, which seems very smart. You should quote me more often, as it makes you look good. Sure, okay–Solondz is a humanist. But maybe mean is the wrong word–maybe I mean “cruel.” Even if he has profound empathy for the characters’ plights, Solondz is also profoundly almost brutally cruelly unsympathetic about their fates. And that cruelty is bound up in (or produces) the comic; when the film opens with Jon Lovitz crying, I laugh. In fact, that may be my favorite kind of ‘mean’ funny: not the ironic detached quality of some of the ’70s black comedies, but the sympathetic viciousness of Ritchie’s films, or stuff by Solondz.
Carnal Knowledge ought to be up there, too, but it is mean, mean, mean. That makes two for Jules Feiffer.
I admired the boldness of Happiness though I’m not sure it succeeded as a black comedy; setting up an inherently sensationalistic scenario like a pedophile talking to his child seems like an easy way to acquire a reputation for shock and misanthropic social critique. the same goes for featuring the hapless romantic trials of various schlubs as though from a godlike distance. I like an acerbic style but I’m not sure there’s much in Happiness past a kind of articulate distaste and easy targetting of figures which are mostly stereotypes, physical stereotypes at that (fat people are sad; skinny pretty girls are bitchy and self-obsessed, etc.).
I have not seen a number of the Michael Ritchie films but I love Prime Cut. It’s the best urban/genre answer to the “city is corrupt” kind of film–here the midwest is a pit of depravity so unbelievable that a gangster named MaryAnne (a great Gene Hackman role) actually sells naked women in a barn.
as for mean comedies? how about Nashville? I also like Death to Smoochy,How to Get Ahead in Advertising (same director as Withnail and I), Ace in the Hole–do Dead Alive and Blue Velvet count? Belle de Jour? The Last Detail?
Reynolds mentioned Being There – A fine film I think. And that reminds me that I recently saw The Life and Death of Peter Sellers – not a very fine film I think.
Trying to figure out what was wrong with it, I am struck that perhaps Geoffrey Rush just isn’t very funny. And while Peter Sellers may have been an awful man in real life, he was very funny. John Lithgow was quite good as Blake Edwards though. And there’s a strange, touching scene between them with Sellers standing outside a restaurant watching Edwards.
Am I wrong, or did this get released theatrically in the UK and do quite well critically and commercially?
A good deal of the film deals with Sellers’ efforts to get Being There made. And, if I remember, in the book, there is no christ-like walking on the water. In the film, of course there certainly is. This is probably film school 101 – but why is that? What was trying to be conveyed? It seems oddly similar to the last chapter of Burgess’ Clockwork Orange wherein Alex “grows out” of the violent phase of his life, giving the whole book a rather different tilt than it would have without it. And it’s been so long since I’ve watched the Kubrick film, that I don’t recall how it ends. I think though that Kubrick decided to ignore the last chapter?
And mentioning Kubrick, that takes me right back to the Peter Sellers movie. It’s not a waste of time, espcially for people here with a passing interest in Kubrick, Sellers, and odd directional choices (this film has a lot of them). Since watching it, I’ve wanted to get out my old Peter Sellers CD box set and listen to some of those post-Goons sketches he did such as “Suddenly, It’s Folk Song” to get the bad taste of the film out of my mouth.
Funny people are miserable bastards though.