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November 20, 2008

Movie Watching Tip: McMovies

This isn't really a tip. It's more of a mild rant.

I use the term "McMovie" all the time and haven't defined it on the site as of yet. The term pretty much speaks for itself. Let me define it in terms of modern comedy. It's like we have lost our ability to have any expectations when it comes to movies. We seem content with settling for productions that people see just because nothing else of interest is being released. We sit through these cheap films and dutifully report the following day in the office that “It was okay, I laughed a couple times.” Then the experience is then forgotten. Three years from now someone will reference the film and no one in the conversation will remember who was in it. “It had…what’s his name…oh, yeah that one with Adam Sandler.” There will be a brief moment of recognition and then it will be forgotten again. The whole thing is as disposable as fast food leftovers - thus "McMovie".

Hollywood has descended into being the advertisement branch of larger corporations and has little interest in developing vibrant and moving pieces of cinema. Film as a whole has descended into near irrelevance but comedy has been one of the biggest losers in this corporate transformation. We once had masters such as Laurel & Hardy, Abbott & Costello, Woody Allen, Mel Brooks and even Jerry Lewis (love him or hate, he has his place.) Smart, or at least original, comedy flourished. American cinema had a broad range of comedic acts plying their wares.

Today we have replaced this vibrant genre with two brands of “humor”. There are the bottom feeder comedy movies such as Jackass, The Scary Movie spoofs and the various teenage sex comedies. The other is the corporate comedies which can effectively be broken into two branches. You have the Ben Stiller cat box of comedy. These little nuggets revolve around Stiller, The Owen Brothers, Vince Vaughn, Steve Carrell and Will Ferrell. These have strong concepts with little or no follow through. The other branch is the SNL veteran films revolving around Adam Sandler, Chris Rock, Mike Myers, David Spade, the late Chris Farley and Rob Schneider. A majority of these are lame concepts with absolutely no follow through. The Hollywood conveyor belt keeps kicking out dimwitted productions from these product lines. There are, of course, comedies that fall outside of the brands I've listed above. Those are films trying to immolate those brands above or are one-shot star vehicles with a short lifespan.

Like with the music industry, we have be taught to accept cheap products as being the norm. It used to be that artists would slave to entertain the audience. Today, it is the audience who is subservient to the “artist”. We go see Adam Sandler, not because he’s a brilliant comedian. We go see him because he’s Adam Sandler. He’s been branded (marketed) as a comedian. We have to look to previous generation’s entertainment to find quality. I’m not saying everything from the past is golden, there lousy productions to be found back then as well. The issue I have is the level of bad material has exploded and is now common. Hollywood is polishing turds and selling them at blowout prices.

For the love of everything that is holy, PLEASE STOP WATCHING CRAPPY COMEDY. They make the Epic Movie/Superhero Movie/Disaster Movie movies because people pay to see them. We need to stop buying lame gunk and demand higher quality that just simple fart and boob jokes. If we stop buying bad material, they will (eventually) slow down their production...one would think. The state of our culture is our responsibility. If we demand good works they will make them. As long as we continue to be content with movies that should be boxed in Styrofoam we're going to inundated with moronic nonsense and we have no one but ourselves to blame.

Labels: miscellaneous, movie watching tip

Robert M. Lindsey said...: I'm with you on this one. The only comedies we watch are old ones. We don't watch any current sitcoms either.; November 21, 2008 at 8:47 AM

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