Danish comedy duo Casper Christensen and Frank Hvam would like you to know they are not pedophiles. Not that accusations of creative indecency would stop them from toying with the line of good taste, as they do to hilarious effect in the R-rated Danish sex comedy Klown. The Curb Your Enthusiasm-style road trip comedy which they wrote and co-star in, happens to be the funniest, most outrageous film of the year, and it has already been acquired for American remake by Todd Phillips and Danny McBride.
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Maybe it's because I've been obsessing more than usual over Joel Kinnaman since rolling through all of Season 1 of AMC's The Killing in a matter of days (I know, late to the party), but I dare any other Kinnaman-lover out there to watch the new trailer for Lola Versus and not fixate on the future RoboCop's 10 seconds of trailer screen time. Phew. That said, it's quite winning on its own, thanks to Greta Gerwig's charm and the hazy-golden gleam of the New York City streets she's traipsing along as she tries to figure out what to do after fiance Kinnaman calls off their engagement.
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I can picture the lightbulb that went off the day someone in marketing came up with the idea of a viral goof on a medical ad for April 13's The Three Stooges: 'It's like a disease, only moviegoers won't want the cure!' Actually, I'd kill for an anti-"Stoogation" remedy that'd make the Farrelly Bros.' upcoming re-imagining seem remotely palatable. I'm hoping the entire campaign has simply misrepresented what will turn out to be the comic discovery of the year after this painfully nonsensical ad for "Stoogesta."
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High five to Fox for pulling their bullet-ridden Neighborhood Watch marketing materials from Florida theaters this week following the February killing of Trayvon Martin. Trying to get as much distance as possible from the teaser's emphasis on grown men Ben Stiller, Vince Vaughn, Jonah Hill, and Richard Ayoade stalking and finger-shooting suburban kids is a good idea and a sensitive move -- not to mention a no-brainer necessity, PR-wise -- so the studio's forthcoming campaign will likely focus on the film's "broad alien-invasion comedy" elements. But even four months from now, will it be too soon for Neighborhood Watch to make fun escapism out of vigilante violence?
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The first trailer for Sacha Baron Cohen's The Dictator had Megan Fox and Kardashian jokes, but those pop culture touchstones have been replaced by Anna Faris and terrorism gags in the new, longer trailer. An upgrade? Eh, sure. Maybe. Or not: Faris's brunette pixie 'do does make her look particularly adorable, but juxtaposed with her natural poise Cohen comes off as a poor man's Adam Sandler. Like, hammy Zohan-lite Sandler.
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For an independently produced comedy that mostly revolves around adults talking to each other — sometimes with child accessories — in varying degrees of inebriation, Friends with Kids is finding a modest amount of success. It’s not perfect, but somehow it manages to be funny without any accidental drug trips, grandmas shooting guns at the dinner table, or Tom Cruise rescuing Cameron Diaz from a crashing plane. Writer-director-co-star Jennifer Westfeldt has returned us a bit to the days of comedies of manners, instead of the awful dichotomy between shrill “romantic” comedy and Apatovian gross-out comedy where Hollywood seems stuck these days. In that spirit, here are four lessons future adult comedies should take from Friends with Kids.
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Two teen-oriented comedies this season share much in common, from a gleeful embracing of the spirit of youthful recklessness to the idea that geeks will indeed inherit the earth. One is among the better comedies we’re likely to see this year; the other is by far, on its face, the sleaziest. Both were penned by the same actor-turned-screenwriter, Michael Bacall, who also captured the slings and arrows of slacker youth heroism in 2010’s Scott Pilgrim vs. the World. So why are Project X and 21 Jump Street so diametrically opposed when it comes to depicting the youth of today?
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Once you start commemorating an entire year in film, it's hard to stop. I'd apologize, except I think I'm onto a provocative topic: What is the single funniest line of dialogue in 2011? Was it in a straight comedy, or did a serious actor utter it in a moment of surprise levity? Or is a woman responsible for the year's most hilarious quip?
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It's not like Bucky Larson: Born to Be a Star aspires to be Citizen Kane, or Monty Python and the Holy Grail or even Wedding Crashers. All it wants to be is a silly, raunchy comedy about the rise of an extremely unlikely adult-film actor. That it fails so spectacularly in this regard makes it almost something special -- not only is Bucky Larson incredibly unfunny, it's also squeamish in a manner that makes you wonder if either writers Adam Sandler (who produced the film via his Happy Madison company), Allen Covert and Nick Swardson (who plays Bucky) have somehow never actually seen porn, or if they subcontracted the script out to a group of 8-year-olds with only the vaguest idea of what it entails. The latter would explain how incidental sex is to what's theoretically a movie all about it, from an early scene in which we learn that our hero has never masturbated or even heard of the concept, to the porn career he establishes, in which he never actually comes into contact with his costars.
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What does Kung Fu Panda 2 have to do with King of the Hill, Midnight Run, and Animal House? Ask screenwriters Jonathan Aibel and Glenn Berger, who co-scripted and co-produced the Oscar-nominated 2008 global hit Kung Fu Panda and its sequel, in theaters this weekend. After working their way up the ranks with TV comedy gigs, the duo has emerged one of DreamWorks Animation's strongest writing teams -- and to think, it all started with a stuffy office job in Boston...
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As the saying goes, it takes a village... and when the long-gestating Nazi comedy Iron Sky finally hits theaters next year, we'll have many folks to thank. (Including crowdfunding backers and financiers from the U.K., Australia, Germany, and Finland.) Iron Sky explains that the Nazis didn't just disappear when World War II ended -- they relocated to the moon to regroup and hatch a space invasion of Earth (or, "meteorblitzkrieg") in 2018. After the jump, the latest grindhouse-y teaser!
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Behind the femme-dominated laughs of this Friday's Bridesmaids -- the movie that will prove ladies can carry blockbuster comedies, or not, but probably so -- is writer, actor, director, Judd Apatow compatriot, and creator of the well-loved cult series Freaks and Geeks, Paul Feig. After a successful run directing episodes of your favorite shows (The Office, Arrested Development), Feig is finally staking his claim in the film world with the Kristen Wiig starrer, about a woman tapped to play maid of honor at her best friend's wedding. But Feig, on the brink of a likely summer hit, is noticeably nervous.
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A week after reportedly battling fellow funny ladies Kristen Wiig and Gillian Jacobs for the role, Anna Faris is in talks to star in the Larry Charles-directed The Dictator opposite Sacha Baron Cohen and Ben Kingsley. Cohen will play the titular "heroic" dictator, who is replaced by a lookalike and gets lost in America; Faris will play an organic food store owner who comes into his life. Paramount is already set to release the improvised comedy on May 11, 2012. [Deadline]
