Search for Comedy

Two elements comprise a comedy: content and composition. The first relates to what the joke is about; the second refers to how the joke is told. Good humor can be ruined by bad composition - think of someone who tells a "funny story" but messes up ...

Sometimes a movie is so good it makes me glad I'm in the business of writing reviews. Bachelorette is not one of those. Sometimes a movie is so bad it makes me want to go into seclusion and never see another film. Bachelorette is one of those. ...

For Rodney Dangerfield, the stand-up comedian whose catchphrase was “I don’t get no respect,” Back to School provided an opportunity to get more than his share of praise and adulation. The crowd-pleasing comedy grossed $91M, making it th...

Had Back to the Future come to life as originally envisioned by the purse string-holders at Universal Pictures (which owned the rights to Bob Gale's screenplay), it might have been a very different project, with Eric Stoltz in the lead role. Stoltz...

Film critics love titles that imply something about the movie in question (either in a straightforward or ironic fashion). Thus, it might seem that The Back-Up Plan offers a perfect opportunity to play with the name; after all, as it applies to a ...

I’m not sure what more I can say about Bad Boys: Ride or Die, the fourth installment in the over-the-hill franchise, that I haven’t written in reviews of the previous films. Unsurprisingly, considering it has the same directors as the third Ba...

A Bad Moms Christmas is one of those plot-by-numbers sit-com movies that tries hard (perhaps too hard) to reproduce the elements that made the earlier film successful. As such, it never strays far from its safe place and, although it offers oc...

Bad News Bears may be the most entertaining remake of the year (thus far), but that's less a statement of praise than it is a condemnation of this class of movies. With a script co-credited to Bill Lancaster, who penned the original 1976 screenpla...

Bad Santa's Willie (Billy Bob Thornton) is the kind of guy who makes Scrooge look like a generous, mild mannered eccentric. With a character as thoroughly unlikable as this, you know immediately that Bad Santa is not going to be just another moder...

2003’s Bad Santa was a milestone in feel-bad black comedy. Directed by Terry Zwigoff, written by Glenn Ficarra & John Requa, and co-executive produced by the Coen Brothers, it was a holiday movie unlike any previous holiday movie. Although ...