GENRE RESEARCHComedy

COMEDY

Comedy is a genre of film that users humor as a driving force. The aim of comedy films is to illicit laughter from the audience through entertaining stories and characters. Although the comedy film may take on some serious materials, most of them have a happy ending. Comedy films has the tendency to become a hybrid sub-genre as humor could be incorporated into many other types of genres. Comedies are more likely than other films to fall back on the success and popularity of an individual star.

WHAT ARE TYPICAL FEATURES OF THE COMEDY GENRE?

The typical features of a comedy genre are amusement, surprise, fun, humor, wit and wordplay. Each variation of comedy uses a different kind of element to infuse a sense of originality and individuality of every skit done. The ultimate goal of comedy is to instill fun to its audience and create an emotion of fulfillment and enlightenment to certain factual issues.

SUBGENRES OF COMEDY Adventure Comedy: The Jewel of the Nile (Lewis Teague) Action Comedy: Knight and Day (James Mangold) Black Comedy: Kind Hearts and Coronets (Robert Hamer) Crime / Caper Comedy: Ocean's Eleven (Lewis Milestone) Espionage Comedy: Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me (Jay Roach) High-school Comedy: American Pie (Paul Weitz) Horror Comedy: Young Frankenstein (Mel Brooks) Historical Comedy: History of the World: Part One (Mel Brooks) Musical Comedy: Everyone Says I Love You (Woody Allen) Parody: The Great Dictator (Charles Chaplin) Romantic Comedy: Ninotchka (Ernst Lubitsch), When Harry Met Sally (Rob Reiner) Science-fiction Comedy: Back to the Future (Robert Zemeckis) Screwball Comedy: The Awful Truth (Leo McCarey) Sex Comedy: Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex But Were Afraid to

Ask (Woody Allen), Midsummer Night’s Sex Comedy (Woody Allen) Tragic Comedy: Made in Dagenham (Nigel Cole) Western Comedy: Cat Ballou (Elliot Silverstein)

HISTORY OF COMEDY

Comedy dates back to the era of silent film in 1895 where it first began to be shown in television programmes. With the absence of dialogue it was very difficult for comedy to come across and between 1895-1930 silent film comedy relied heavily on slapstick and burlesque humour. Burlesque is theatrical entertainment which includes comical sketches and parodies aimed at an adult audience due to the explicit scenes that were shown, these included stripteases. Slapstick is quite different to burlesque as this includes very often practical jokes were played.

ONE OF THE MOST SUCCESSFUL COMEDY IN RECENT YEARS Production Co: Universal Pictures, Relativity Media,

Apatow Productions Plot Keywords: maid of honour, bridesmaid, best

friend Made in the USA Budget: $32,500,500

Box Office Opening Weekend: $26,247,410 (USA) (13 May

2011) Gross: $288,383,523 (23 September 2011)