Category: Comedy

  • The Wedding Singer (1998)

    Cauliflower isn’t the most flavorful of veggies, but slather it in ranch dressing and it’s damned tasty. Why do I tell you this? It’s akin to my theory about why The Wedding Singer remains such a pleasant (if unremarkable) romantic comedy 25 years after its theatrical release. It’s all about The Wedding Singer‘s slathering of…

  • The Hangover (2009)

    The no-holds-barred bachelor’s party ranks as one of life’s great paradoxes. OK, maybe not one of the great paradoxes, but certainly in the top 100 or so. As anyone who has ever engaged in such depravity can attest (or so I’m told), this particular rite of passage turns on the conceit that its most memorable…

  • The Ant Bully (2006)

    The animated kids’ movie The Ant Bully begins with scrawny, little Lucas Nickle (voiced by Zach Tyler Eisen from TV’s Avatar: The Last Airbender) suffering a wedgie at the hands of the neighborhood bully. “What are you gonna do about it?” Lucas’ tormenter asks rhetorically. “Nothing, ’cause I’m big and you’re small.” Almost immediately after…

  • The One and Only (1978)

    The One and Only must have looked like a surefire hit on paper. After all, the 1978 romantic comedy starred Henry Winkler, aka The Fonz – resident icon at the time of TV’s hugely successful Happy Days – and was helmed by Carl Reiner, who had scored box-office gold the previous year with Oh, God!…

  • Scott Pilgrim vs. the World (2010)

    Based on a series of graphic novels by Bryan Lee O’Malley, Scott Pilgrim vs. the World is a movie with ADD and a lapsed Ritalin prescription. It moves with bullet-train speed, crackles with wit and packs enough hip pop-culture references to make Chuck Klosterman green with envy. There are nods to arcade games, comic books,…

  • (500) Days of Summer (2009)

    Romantic comedies can be as propagandistic as any jingoistic World War II-era flag-waver, playing in the sandbox of audiences’ lovesick fantasies while paying only lip service to the messy reality of relationships. That’s why you have to admire a picture as cheerfully impish as (500) Days of Summer and the zeal with which it both…

  • Up In Smoke (1978)

    In the annals of immortal comedy teams, the pairing of Pedro “Cheech” Marin and Tommy Chong might not rise to the level of, say, Nichols and May (or even Abbott and Costello, for that matter) but none were better at tapping into a specific subculture. Ascending to stardom on a cloud of pot smoke in…

  • Forgetting Sarah Marshall (2008)

    Breaking up is hard to do, as an old song once cautioned us, but that’s hardly a newsflash for anyone who has endured the agony of being dumped. Untold millions of books, movies and songs have commemorated the hell of being kicked to the proverbial curb and the subsequent tears, depression, drinking, vomiting, rebound, stalking…