Action Comedy
Written by Tom J. Astle and Matt Ember
Directed by Peter Segal
I approach films based on old TV shows with suspicion, but the comic potential of Steve Carell as Maxwell Smart lowered my guard. But while Get Smart has its charms, it doesn’t fulfill that potential by a long shot.
Carell wisely doesn’t attempt to imitate [...]
Very broad satire
Written by Uwe Boll and Bryan C. Knight; based on the video game
Directed by Uwe Boll
Postal starts with a promising scene for an intentionally offensive comedy. Two terrorists in an airliner cockpit (presumably on 9/11) discuss how many virgins they’ll get in the afterlife. It turns out they’ve been given different numbers, and [...]
Dramatic comedy
Written by Diablo Cody
Directed by Jason Reitman
The last thing I expected before the year ended was a comedy about unintentional pregnancy that was more truthful, more insightful, and just plain funnier than Knocked Up. I found one. You could go to movies for years and not find anything as good as Juno.
Ellen [...]
Family-friendly fantasy comedy
Written by Bill Kelly
Directed by Kevin Lima
Howard Hawks’ famous criteria for a great film–three good scenes and no bad ones–almost applies to this family fantasy. It has more than three great scenes. But it also has a few that border on the edge of just plain bad, and some horrendously cast lead [...]
Musical
Written and directed by John Turturro
To a radical non-smoker like myself–someone who finds the act of smoking about as sexy as Dick Cheney–the very term “Romance and Cigarettes” seems odd. That’s appropriate. John Turturro’s musical tragi-comedy about marriage and adultery is a very odd motion picture. The songs are familiar hits, and for the [...]
Tags: Comedy · Music · Reviews
If people know anything about Charlie Chaplin, they know he made silent movies. And if they know anything about silent movies, they want said movies to be accompanied by live music. And yet the upcoming Chaplin series at the Pacific Film Archive, screening nearly all of his features and all of his later shorts, has [...]
Tags: Comedy · Silent Films · Upcoming & Local
Romantic comedy
Written by Pierce Gardner and Peter Hedges
Directed by Peter Hedges
Peter Hedges does something unusual here. He puts a major comedy star (Steve Carell) into a conventional comic plot (widower with adorable kids falls in love with his brother’s girlfriend), then plays it for real emotions without worrying much about laughs. Instead [...]
The Stanford’s new schedule is up, and the theme is Frank Capra. Of the 26 films they’ve announced, 18 are Capra’s.
Actually, they’re starting off Saturday night with a Billy Wilder double bill–Sunset Boulevard and Some Like It Hot. Great movies, but obvious choices that any cinephile has seen countless times. Still, if it’s [...]
Tags: Comedy · Silent Films · Upcoming & Local
What makes British humor so damn funny? First we get Hot Fuzz, easily the funniest new comedy since, well, the equally British Wallace & Gromit in The Curse of the Were-Rabbit. Now Death at a Funeral (directed by an American but still very stiff-upper-lip) passes them all on the laugh meter. To put it simply, [...]