Comedic Confusion

Okay, so it's Friday night, and I, yes, am sitting at home watching the Colbert Report rereun on Comedy Central, and suddenly there was an ad for Talledega Nights. And suddenly I starting thinking about it, and realized: What is up with the comedies being released lately? I'm not sure when it started, but suddenly there's this weird tier of comedies coming out, and they mostly star Will Ferrell and Ben Stiller (they also have some or all of the following:, Steve Carroll, Paul Rudd, Seth Rogan, David Koechner, Luke/Owen Wilson, and Vince Vaughn in them). Anchorman, The 40 Year Old Virgin, Dodgeball. It's a long list.

Now, don't get me wrong, I actually really like all three of those movies (though Anchorman is the hardest to watch), but...where to do they come from? Why a sudden explosion of these sort of lower tier comedies (Zoolander, Mystery Men, Old School)? Did these movies exist in the 80s and I just didn't know about them? Movies seemed to be...bigger, when I was in highschool. Comedies, at least (I suppose there have always been schlocky, cheap horror films. Evil Dead, I'm lookin' at you.), were major studio releases. But, suddenly, in the mid-90s maybe, comedies became inexpensive and silly. Not all of them, obviously. I don't think Ben Stiller was exactly vying for an Oscar in Mystery men. But I also don't think he was just vying for a quick paycheck. I mean, it seems to me that these guys really feel like they're doing real work. And they are, because a lot of it, not all of it, is really funny. I think in all the movies I've named, I've found a lot to like. They've all made me laugh, and some I happily watch again (not all of them, but many of them). I think they offer decent comic roles for women I really like (Christine Taylor, Christina Applegate, Janeane Garafalo). But ultimately, they're confections. High in calories, low in actual food value. Meaning, of course, that they don't have any real lasting value or impact. They're not about characters, they're about stereotypes. They're not about ideas, about skewering presumptions and exploring society, they're about cheap laughs (and, I guess, they're cheap to make, as well).

I mean, will Anchorman even be funny in ten years? Or just painful? Some of these have more merit than others. I think the 40 Year Old Virgin is truely a funny movie, but Old School wasn't all that funny when it was released initially - how will it hold up?

I'm not sure what this says about us as a culture or a society. I was going to say that it seems like we used to make more nuanced and sophisticated comedies (Some Like it Hot, Philadelphia Story, Tootsie), but then I remembered Herbie the Love Bug. So maybe my whole premise is completely off base, and we've always made stupid, silly dumbass comedies, and I just never really noticed it.