Slapstick
Slapstick comedy relies heavily on action being funny, such as falling over and the most famous example of slapstick comedy is the classic cartoon, Tom and Jerry. This type of comedy is attractive to filmmakers as it requires very little visual effects and narrative can often be seen as unimportant in slapstick comedy as the audience is simply ;laughing at what’s on screen. Slapstick comedy exaggerates a lot, and this is shown particularly in cartoons such as Looney Tunes and Tom and Jerry, which are both heavily slapstick.
An example of a slapstick film is Ace Ventura: Pet Detective (1994, dir. Tom Shadyac), this may also be classed as a parody of detective films. But the lead character (Jim Carrey) uses a lot of slapstick comedy and gags to make the film comical. These include his exaggerated movements. Carrey also shows gags throughout the film and responses to serious remarks. He is portrayed as an extremely silly character, not taking anything seriously, embarrasing and not normal; it’s these qualities in Ace that make this a slapstick comedy.
Black comedy
Black Comedy is a new genre, a hybrid of comedy and drama. It has also been referred to as Dramedy (a hybrid of Drama and Comedy). Dramedies cover the dark point of life, in a comical way. An Example is Little Miss Sunshine (2006, dir. Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris), this film covers suicide, American poverty, unemployment and drug use, with the family still being optimistic. Most dramedies are seen to cover all aspects of life, as they cover darkness and light points and be quite realistic unless the amount of comedy and drama is unbalanced. Another example of a dramedy is Juno (2007, dir. Jason Reitman).
Juno is about ‘the bumps along the way’ as Juno goes through with her pregnancy. The trailer uses dramatic material with an acoustic, relaxing soundtrack, to make the material seem less dramatic. Also, the characters attitude and language about the pregnancy also makes it comedic such as ‘That is one doodle that can’t be undid, homeskillet’ which is a rather unique way of describing a pregnancy test.The trailer shows most of the story in order, so the audience knows the basic main events of the story, before they see it. The trailer doesn’t however; cover any of the ending, which makes people want to watch the film to find out the ending.
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| Posters of Men in Black (left) Vampires Suck (right) |
Parodies mock the work of other, more serious films. Therefore, in genre they are often classed as Crime comedy, Action Comedy, Horror comedy etc, depending on the film they are mocking. Some parodies are more subtle than others, for example, Men in Black (1997, dir. Barry Sonnenfeld) mocks spys and alien invasion films, but in a very subtle way that doesn’t feel like a parody. Vampires Suck (2010, dir. Jason Friedberg and Aaron Seltzer) on the other hand is a very obvious parody of one particular saga of films, and is obvious is only trying to make fun the saga. Vampires suck is actually more of a spoof- where something is mocked excessively and pointlessly just to get extra laughs.
Parody trailers don’t often show the actual storyline much, they just tend to show the general theme of the film. This may be because if they are copying another film or series, the audeince may already be familiar with the narrative. For example, in Men in Black, from the trailer, all the information you really get is an introduction to what the organisation is and then the idea that they fight aliens. No real storyline is given away from it past that. This intrigues the audience to see more and find out a story. However, this tactic can backfire as it may seem as the film doesn’t have a storyline to it, that it is just action and in the case of Men in Black, it is just killing aliens throughout the film.
Action Comedy
This is also a relatively new hybrid. Action comedy is often used in parodies of action films, as it uses the action in a comedic way. A popular sort of action comedy is normal people being superheroes, in films like Scott Pilgrim VS the world (2010, dir. Edgar Wright) and Kick-Ass (2010, dir. Matthew Vaughn). In these two films, two normal teenage, nerdy boys become superheroes; in Kick-Ass to fight crime and in Scott Pilgrim; to fight off his true loves seven evil exes. These two films focus more explicitly on the action, and only implying the comedic parts, as both are seen as humorous storylines to begin with.
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| Top- Scott Pilgrim vs the World Bottom- Kickass |
In the trailer for Scott PIlgrim vs the World, below. Only the basic plotline of the film is given in the trailer; that Scott must defeat Ramona's evil exes. The trailer also spends almost a minute setting the scene and showing how Ramona and Scott meet. After that, it is just clips of comedic lines and action sequences in no particular order, but just to reinforce the feel of the film. This allows the audience to feel that they know what to expect from the film without giving away any of the plot.
Romantic Comedy
Romantic comedies are most popular with women, and are often called chick flicks. Some are even more aimed at teenage girls, often set in a high school (Mean Girls (2004, dir. Mark Waters)) or similar and some are just aimed at women in general (Leap Year (2010, dir. Anand Tucker). The most popular structure of Rom coms is the woman is very stereotypical, and starts off in an unhealthy relationship (doesn’t have to include a man) and she seeks comfort in a male friend and eventually finds out she loves him and he loves her back; a film that uses this is Made of Honour (2008, dir. Paul Weiland) but almost every rom com I can think of, follows this structure somehow. Teen romantic comedies vary more in storyline, but often include more teenage problems such as popularity and losing friends, an example is Easy A (2010, dir. Will Gluck)
Mean Girls shows the story of Kady Heron as she stops being homeschooled and joins a high school. Here she gets accepted by the plastics and therefore rejected by anyone else. This trailer doesn’t show much of the actual storyline pasts the introduction, but it does show enough of the clips for the audience to get a strong idea of the type of film. The clips are in a basic chronological order, but many short clips to reinforce the storyline aren’t in chronological order, but do tie in with what the trailer is trying to portray at that point.
