Tuesday, February 15, 2011

We Need to Redefine "Comedy"

My wife and I have Valentine's tradition where we get this tomato soup we love, make grilled cheese sandwiches and watch a movie. We've done it for a few years now and every year we try to choose a movie that is kind of lighthearted and fun. So, where do you turn for a lighthearted movie, well the Comedy section of course! Wrong.

We chose The Kids Are All Right which on a the scale of lighthearted to serious apparently falls somewhere around a gory World War II biopic. Why did we choose it? Well, we had both heard it was good, Rotten Tomatoes gave it really great reviews and, oh yeah, it won BEST COMEDY at The Golden Globes. You know what this movie is not? A comedy.

The Kids Are All Right is a drama. Case closed. Dumb and Dumber is a comedy. Just because there are some moments of humor the overall mood of the pic is 100% drama (with a hint of Cinemax after dark). Here's a hilarious plot-line for you: A middle-aged couple's bitter arguments begin to take there toll on two children who are already dealing with the troubles of life! HAHAHAHA!!!

It's time we got a little more stringent on what we label a comedy. For example, The Kids Are All Right beat out Alice In Wonderland for the Golden Globe in comedy. Neither of these movies are comedies. Desperate Housewives was often nominated for Best Television Comedy, again, not really a comedy in my opinion. Maybe it's just time for a new category or something.

2 comments:

Debbie said...

I have to preface this by saying that I don't like sex or nudity in movies (I got through "The Reader," but that was pushing it), so when my fiance and I watched "The Kids Are All Right," needless to say, I was horrified. I think we watched the first 15 minutes and then turned it off. It was way too disgusting, I don't think there was any need for that stuff in the movie, and you are right, from what we saw, it was not a comedy. We looked forward to it a lot because it seemed like an interesting plot, plus my fiance really likes Mark Ruffalo. But we just couldn't sit through any more of it.

I don't have a problem with nudity in an artistic way, like if it's somewhat necessary to the storyline (like with "The Reader"), but this was just too much. I couldn't believe it was nominated for anything. Yuck :(

By the way, in case you haven't seen it, an actual fun movie is "The King's Speech." It would have been a much better Valentine's Day movie choice :)

Anonymous said...

What the film industry needs to do is create a "dramedy" category. I agree, this movie was far from a true comedy. While as a whole it didn't do much for me, the performances given by Annette Bening and Julianne Moore were epic and worth every bit of recognition they are getting.