 The "Unequivocally Reprehensible" Memo There's Something About Dumb Comedy... |
There's Something About Peter and Bobby Farrelly make dumb comedies (Dumb and Dumber, Kingpin, There's Something About Mary) -- but they're dumb conceptual comedies. These guys are Ivy Leaguers with sub-frat-boy senses of humor who really get off on showing or saying gross or non-"politically correct" things, just for the inherent shock value. What's funny to them is that stuff like this is not supposed to be funny. To me, usually, it isn't. I laughed out loud exactly once at Dumb and Dumber (at a perfectly timed pause Jeff Daniels took before childishly throwing a snowball at his girlfriend -- it said more about his character than the whole rest of the movie); I laughed quite a bit at Kingpin; and enjoyed There's Something About Mary (mainly the appearances of Jonathan Richman), whenever the movie wasn't TRYING SO HARD to shock me into laughing that it stifled my Laughter Impulse like a pillow over the face of Randle Patrick McMurphy. People around me, however, were doing their share of groaning and guffawing (hard to tell the two apart here). But there were a number of moments when I couldn't tell why they were laughing. Comedy -- even dumb comedy -- requires a point of view, and I'm not sure what the Farrelly's is (or if they even know what it is). For example: There's a scene at a driving range when a sleazy private detective (Matt Dillon) attempts to woo Mary (Cameron Diaz), the woman he's been tailing. He knows she has a retarded brother whom she adores and looks after, so he casually mentions all the work he's done with "RE-tards" and how great they are. The scene is funny because the guy is so stupid -- so unlike Mary, who is presented as a sexy Mother Theresa who golfs -- that he doesn't even know how much he's turning her off. The more he talks, the deeper the hole he digs himself into. BUT: I also get the feeling that the Farrelys (and the audience) are laughing not so much at the character as at his use of taboo words -- the way a four year-old might laugh at saying "poo-poo." And that doesn't strike me as particularly funny. Comedy is great for puncturing taboos and deflating pretentions -- Monty Python served up some hysterically outrageous visual and vergal gags about dismemberment and cannibalism. But simply violating a cultural taboo isn't enough to make something funny all by itself. There's another scene in Something About Mary where a guy who uses braces to walk tries to bend over to pick up his keys. He wants to do it himself -- and the scene goes on and on and on (to excruciating silence from the audience with whom I saw the movie) as he strains and wobbles and strikes grotesque poses. (There's yet another comedy lesson here about Trying Too Hard, but we'll save that for another occasion...) Call him a cripple or a gimp or whatever -- ho-ho! -- but making fun of somebody just because of their physical handicaps just doesn't elicit chuckles from me. Making the underdog the butt of the humor -- whether it's the crippled or the retarded -- just doesn't strike me as funny. They say that, in drama, tragedy requires that the "hero" be among the nobility so that he takes a great fall. Comedy, too, tends to aim at the High And Mighty in order to bring them down to earth. Reactionaries today tend to justify their attacks on the "less fortunate" as being "honest" or perversely "anti-P.C." -- but more often than not they're just being mean and petty. You may laugh, but (if you have any scruples at all) you'll wonder why afterwards.... NEXT: Out of Sight: What a difference a director makes...
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