Silly comedy

I do love a good comedy. Sometimes total slapstick (The Mask, or Blazing Saddles), and sometimes a little more subtle.

the airplane movies, what a hoot. and all the christopher guest films too-- i prefer humor to drama. same when it comes to reading. i'm going through a roy blount phase, he's just so silly.

plainoldme, have you seen the movie "Dick"? if you like silly, this is right up there.

Ah, Hot Shots! Saw the first one on an airplane and we didn't bother to rent headphones. It didn't matter one bit, we still laughed ourselves silly.

Bubba Ho-tep was awesome.

Cycloptichorn

most new "comedys" leave me cold. I haven't seen one that made me laugh until I cried for a while now. I'm thinking about going to see HAROLD AND KUMAR GO TO WHITE CASTLE tomorrow. I'm hoping for the best. I did like BUBBA-HO-TEP

I am a comedy writer. There's nothing better than good old fashioned knee slapping comedy.

Nick, so why are you so damn unfunny? You unfunny bastard. Write something funny...NOW. Make us laugh!! LAUGH WITH GLEE!

Ever see "Strange Brew?" That is a very stupid comedy, but funny.

Billy Madison is one of my favorites. I could name a ton, just not in the mood.

Hey Slap. I'm a professional. Fork over the cash and I'll have you laughing so hard phlegm will be squirting out your nostrils and ears. You will need botox to remove the smile from your face.

Wait a minute - you already HAVE phlegm coming out your nostrils and ears. You're all set!

I loved Blazing Saddles. Back in Detroit in the 1970s, during the days of underground or alternative radio, I had my clock radio set to the best station in town, one that vied with the best in the country. (Lots of the deejays moved to Boston at the same time I did and ended up on WBCN.)

Was surprised one morning to awaken to Frankie LAine. What? I said. Then I realized the words to the song were utter nonsense. "He rode a blazing saddle. . . His saddle became a star to light the way."

It was an announcement for one of the station's midnight movie previews. I called immediately or sent in a post card to reserve tickets and went with my then best friend, Harry Heilmann (grandson of the Detroit Tiger baseball legend). What a hoot!

gala -- I never heard of the movie, "Dick." What is it?

I plan to see Harold and Kumar which looked great in previews and which is getting good critical reaction.

plainoldme-- "dick" got little publicity. it came out in 1999. it's a spoof on watergate told as the "true" story of what happend through the eyes of two 15 yr. old girls. will farrell is in it, kirsten dunst plays one of the daffy teens. i've seen it about five times, it cracks me up.

Not the only Watergate spoof -- "Nasty Habits" uses Nuns as the various characters in the scandal and Sandy Dennis does an extremely funny emulation of Gerald Ford. Melina Mercouri is Kissinger! Silliness abounds but it's written more as a satire and curiously not that many get it.

As far as other really silly comedies, of course "Airplane" is likely my number one. "There's Something About Mary" also dares to get silly and it's great fun, especially the hair mousse. Maybe a better description is farcical comedy. The movie that would just as likely be my number one and I can watch it again and again is Mel Brooks' "Young Frankenstein." "Put the candle back..."

If you're in the mood for some European comedy you might want to try "att angöra en brygga" (Sorry don't know a US title) which is a classic in Sweden, about a bunch of non-mariners trying to get ashore in a sailing boat. hilarious!

Apart from that, what about the French originals to Three men and a baby, The Woman in Red, My Daddy the Hero, Father's day, etc.

Or, if you are really down and out, you could try a Dutch comedy like Flodder or Flodder in America. You can't get much sillier.

Thanks for the recommendations -- the World Cinema channel on VOOM satellite is playing a lot of foreign comedies. I'm currently out of NetFlix so I'll look for these.

In case you have trouble finding the above mentioned, I have a few more titles to suggest:

-Leningrad Cowboys go America (weird Finnish humour centred on an existing rock band). Funny how many comedies there are about people "coming to America", but relatively few about Americans going abroad. I can only think of National Lampoons European Vacation and The Innocents Abroad (any suggestions?)
-Oh Boy (Dutch hommage to Buster Keaton and Tati)
-Delicatessen (very black French humour, you probably already saw it)
- Guest House Paradiso (over the top humour with Rick Mayal and Adrian Edmondson)
-Getting Any? (Japanese slapstick with Beat Takeshi)

I thought Down by Law had funny moments too, but of course that one is American (though much of the humour comes from Roberto Benigni, who also played a hilarious taxi driver in Night on Earth).

Only ones I've seen out of those suggestions that I can remember is "Delicatessen" and "European Vacation." I'd like to see "Deli" again and not really the later -- not one of the best of the series.

I quite agree. The humour in "European Vacation did not appeal much to me, but of course humour is strongly culturally bound (only slapstick seems to hit home everywhere in the world). For me a German Comedy is an oxymoron, for example, and for my brother Monty Python style humour is incomprehensibly unfunny.

I think that is one of the reasons why comedies do not cross borders as easily as drama, crime or horror films. I have always wondered, for example, why it was deemed necessary by Hollywood to make US versions of so many French comedies, when I find the French originals invariably funnier (If you speak French, you can sometimes laugh twice, once for the joke in French and once about the translation in the subtitles ), but I assume that the Hollywood versions are more palatable to the American public at large.