Comedy movies over the last couple of years have been dying, unfortunately. And it’s for a multitude of reasons. One of the biggest is just because of the space we live in now.
Access to comedy is now easier than ever with TikTok, YouTube, and Instagram; all three platforms have adopted short-form video formats that are easy to access and easy to get lost in. Why watch a movie for a laugh when you could just get it in 30 seconds?
Because of this shift, comedy is now evolving more rapidly than ever before. Jokes last for a month at a time, and that’s nowhere near enough time to make a movie.
All the comedy movie classics you love today all had one thing in common: they were all mid-budget movies.
Movies like SuperBad, The Hangover, and Borat were in that category, and the problem with that is that these big studios don’t find it worth the risk to produce mid-budget movies anymore. Nowadays, these studios produce either high-budget action movies or low-budget indie horror movies. Another thing that helped these mid-budget movies thrive was the times.
Back when movies were mostly viewed in theaters, and when people would buy DVDs. There are comedy movies like Napoleon Dynamite, Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle, and Euro Trip. They blew up outside of theaters and gained popularity through sales of discs and rental stores.
In today’s age, comedy movies aren’t just comedy anymore. As an example, Deadpool & Wolverine, one of the best performances from a comedy in a decade, was also an action movie.
Surprisingly, the Barbie movie, which was a pure comedy, has been one of the best-performing movies at the box office. That fact alone shows that a comedy movie can be good; we just need companies that are willing to take risks. That risk is what have lead to some of the greatest movies of all time.
That can be said about anything throughout history. Humans didn’t get to where they are now by just doing the same things and never taking risks. We also didn’t get here by not cherishing the things that we love, either.
If you really love comedy movies, you must prove it. You must show and support these said movies. But these shortcomings aren’t all with these studios. We, as an audience, should be going to these local theaters and try our best to support these comedies so they don’t completely die out.
