By Tobin BarnesI’m an easy touch when it comes to romantic comedies. Yeah, a real mushy schlub--that’s me.
Oh sure, I like well-done regular, non-romantic comedies, too, but those are seldom as advertised--that is, funny. Oftentimes, you’ve already seen the best of the comedy in the trailer. Still, you vainly hope there’s maybe a little bit more. Sadly...there seldom is.
So you spend the whole ninety-minute, long hard slog of a comedy wondering what the heck you’re doing there and hoping nobody you know sees you leave. It’s often cheese whizzy acting run amok in a half-wit story. Embarrassing for all involved, including you.
Even the trailer stuff isn’t funny anymore because you’ve already seen it.
Way, way too many comedies are like that.
Of course, there’s also some notable comedies, like “Airplane,” “Naked Gun,” and “Planes, Trains, and Automobiles.” They, too, feature hammy acting with a half-wit story, but who cares? They’re funny.
Why are they funny and most other comedies aren’t? Magic maybe. As E.B. White said, “Analyzing humor is like dissecting a frog. Few people are interested and the frog dies of it.”
And action movies can be even worse. Unlike comedies, the typical action movie delivers as advertised in spades. You get action till hell won’t have it. Goes on and on. Pretty soon, gets you looking at your watch.
Actually gets tedious: arsenal-emptying gun fights, mass theatrical death, and smash-em-up car chases. All that mayhem quickly turns me into a jaded Homer Simpson—Boring!
Action needs to be oh-so-carefully dolloped—one element amidst numerous others, most importantly characterization. The audience needs to care about the people involved in the action or they might as well watch plaster manikins getting blown up and mangled. And that’s much the case with most action movies.
Maybe this mind-numbing brand of carnage has evolved from some of those hyper-intense video games. The movie’s director is toting up a score rather than framing an engaging story.
One of the notable exceptions in this case is “Saving Private Ryan.” Even in the opening scenes when you don’t know anybody, you care about those soldiers on the beach. The movie all-too-realistically portrays action endured by real people we care about. Granted, there’s much death and mayhem, but no game-like, mega-blaster aura. Instead, the effect is nauseatingly unsettling.
It’s action with a purpose.
And later in the movie, as you get to know the individual characters, what they go through becomes even more emotionally relevant.
Now that’s an action movie.
Good action is based on believable people struggling in a dramatically consistent environment. In other words, action shouldn’t be based on cardboard people dodging gimmicky terrors coming out of leftfield.
Finally, who doesn’t love a well-done drama. I certainly do.
But all-too-often poorly done dramas get dreary. Great dramas deliver catharsis not dreck.
Remember that high school literature word, catharsis?
It’s what good drama does for you. Helps clean out your own repressed demons while observing the characters’ turmoil. It’s like been there, seen that, perhaps even done it. Maybe feel better now.
So seldom does drama get to that level.
Mediocre and bad dramas instead hold us under water and drown us in the drudgery.
Sure, we want the cold hard facts about life, but give us some new angles, some new ways to think about the challenges. Inspire us, enlighten us, and, yes, entertain us the way “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest” does.
Now that’s rarefied drama.
People are paid millions to come up with fine comedy, action, and drama. Why do they so often fail miserably?
But hey, didn’t this start out about romantic comedy? So what gives?
Sorry, I’ll talk about all that next time.
