Anyone who knows me knows that I love to just sit down with a nice movie in my free time. One day this past week, I decided Bridesmaids (2012) would be my pick! A hilarious, raunchy, feel-good movie all about connections based in girlhood. Anyone who knows this movie knows that the performances from the cast are the backbone of what makes the movie so great, many being previous comedy actors or even former Saturday Night Live cast members, Kristin Wiig and Maya Rudolph. In fact, this was a trend for many movies of the 2000s to 2010s, and had been so before. This got me to thinking, when was the last recent movie release with a SNL cast member? Even better question: When was the last comedy only movie that was successful at the box office? Most comedy movies I’ve seen that were recent releases have mixed comedy with another genre. Whether it be a dramedy, horror comedy, or dark comedy, it seems like straight comedy movies have been left to the past, with the exception of a few legacy sequels.
The television field is doing a bit better at least, but a similar trend can be seen there, with many “comedies”, such as Only Murderers in the Building, The Bear, and Fleabag, only winning for performances if there’s a dramatic scene included. Many people won’t even bother watching a sitcom anymore if the first episode doesn’t immediately grab their attention. This doesn’t give the show enough time to breathe or find its rhythm. With views being too low, many series don’t get past the first season.
I think most of this trend can be blamed on, you guessed it, social media. With many algorithms giving people enough comedic videos to get their fix for the day, and attention spans currently lower than ever, it seems many won’t even give a good sitcom the time of day. Especially if it doesn’t hook their attention right from the start. Without the attention span of an audience, and more and more comedies taking a main focus in a separate genre, it seems the category is dying out more and more every movie season. But, maybe with some extra pushback on our end, we can get them back up into the air. Because now more than ever, we need some good laughs.