Why hire him, Vegas?
Unlike previous instalment of the Boycott series, I'm sure this month's chosen film is one that practically everyone with a brain cell will be avoiding - the sequel to the 2009 surprise box office hit that currently sits at 33% on Rotten Tomatoes. At the time of writing, no reviews have been published for this sequel, but Sony Pictures Entertainment is doing its best to oversaturate the promotional material across its social media sites in order to ensure that at least the Adam Sandler crowd watch it, even if they aren’t even watching the Sandler films these days. However, Paul Blart Mall Cop 2 is just the tip of the iceberg in a genre which is always destined to go down terrible, so its release this weekend makes it good timing to discuss it.
Let's start with the elephant in the room - comedies these days tend to all be the same. Separated into numerous groups, the majority of them tend to all be related to one another in some way or form. For Mall Cop 2, it fits into the poo/farts category, with the majority of its gags highlighting on standard bodily actions as though everyone working on it has recently finished primary school. This is a practical staple for Happy Madison Productions, who's seemed to make a living off it thanks to Sandler before it became noticeable that he was becoming lazier and using the consumer's ticket purchases to go on holiday (see Grown Ups and its sequel, Blended, and 50 First Dates). That hasn't stopped other studios trying the same thing, with The Inbetweeners having huge success in the UK on their trips to Ibiza and Australia despite being released close to big blockbusters Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part Two and Guardians of the Galaxy, adding a raunchier side to the standard poo/fart jokes by also including sexual innuendo for the punchline for every joke. Whilst the holiday aspect should be something kept for actual scenery usage rather for a travel guide, the jokes are an entirely different area which usually work best for childrens' films if anything. Other films, such as Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles use this humour only to be ridiculed by fans and general audiences...except kids. Whilst mostly unbearable to people over the age of 15, it always seems to get kids to laugh, which is to be expected - we all laughed at it when we were kids; heck even I did. But at an older age it instead gets a groan unless actually done well. Having Kevin James do a combination of a sneeze, fart and burp is the opposite of being done well.
There's also an increased use of sexism, homophobia and racism in comedies for humorous effect. Whilst Paul Blart is likely far away from that aspect - the film is a little more appealing for younger audiences than the likes of The Inbetweeners or the recent Get Hard - star Kevin James isn't a stranger to this category of humour, appearing in the despised I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry back in 2007. Get Hard's growing star Kevin Hart however is a key example, never trying to differentiate these comments for comedic gain. The Wedding Ringer featured jokes about Hart and Josh Gad being gay for dancing, whilst Get Hard's entire story focuses on ensuring that Will Ferrell doesn't get raped by his fellow convicts by enlisting Hart's help on the instinct that he's a convict through his race. If it weren't for Insurgent's release, last month's Boycott would have easily been about Get Hard alone, but I digress - it's a comedy vehicle which constantly gains appreciation despite the fact that it isn't funny. In the sexism ring, I can easily bring attention back to The Inbetweeners, but just reading my review of the 2014 sequel will easily clear up everything I have wrong with that travesty. Instead I go the quickly-forgotten The Other Women, a film advertised as being all about that girl power...despite how all the schemes by the women are simple little pranks, with the major blows actually coming from men as nearly all three main women each get their own man. Go female independence?
That isn't to say comedy is a lost cause. Whilst the majority of profits go towards the likes of more Paul Blart films, there are a small handful which work. The Marvel films, whilst not strictly speaking comedies, all do well with balancing the right amount of drama and humour - thus adding heart into the characters and making them more likable without turning them into token tropes with catchphrases. Funnily enough, family films have the capacity to make everyone laugh by a mix of jokes understandable for all ages and those solely for the older viewers (for example, Toy Story is filled with subtle innuendo which isn’t picked up on by young viewers until they're older). Heck, even films like Paddington and Shaun the Sheep: The Movie can make slapstick work better than Paul Blart being hit off his segway. And of course you have current king of comedy Edgar Wright, who may not earn the financial rewards he deserves with the likes of Scott Pilgrim VS The World, Hot Fuzz and even The Adventures of Tintin (which he co-wrote with Joe Cornish and Steven Moffat back when Moffat was consistently good), but at least he can use visuals for comedic effect also rather than keeping it all bland like every other comedy out there. But by comparison of the classic comedies of the past, there's nothing memorable these days. Sure you can sometimes get something quirky and delightful like The Grand Budapest Hotel, but for every Hotel is half a dozen Paul Blarts or Get Hards. And that's not even bringing the idea of comedy sequels into the mix, although now seems like the best timing for it - although everyone knows that comedy sequels rarely work. Heck, when Dreamworks ha da hit sequel with Shrek 2, they ruined it by adding two worse instalments on top of it with even more pop culture references. Remember this tagline for the fourth film? 
Yeah, not a good thing, Dreamworks. It kinda makes me happy that you are doing badly these days, although you have toned this rubbish down following the success of both How to Train Your Dragon films.
To round this whole thing off, comedy is a bad stage right now. Once a pinnacle genre with the likes of Ghostbusters and Ferris Bueller's Day Off - films which still hold up to this day - these days the big ones not aimed for families are either films which are technically but with a higher classification rating for some reason or are just filled with gags which are deemed inappropriate in an era where equality is more and more feasible. Yes, not every film can be the next Grand Budapest Hotel or Scott Pilgrim - heck, it'd be hard to replicate the success of last year's 22 Jump Street, which I expected to hate - but can we at least try to make good comedies for everyone rather than a 90 minute version of Vine? A good start would be by avoiding Paul Blart Mall Cop 2, before moving on to the big leagues.
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