Starting next Tuesday (4.12) former Chicago Tribune film writer Mark Caro will be hosting a Music Box film series called “Is It Still Funny?” The idea is to screen a comedy that was considered hilarious at the time and see how it plays by today’s sensibilities. Caro will moderate a post-screening discussion. The first four films are National Lampoon’s Animal House (4.12), Blazing Saddles (4.19), Duck Soup (4.26) and There’s Something About Mary (5.3).
HE’s No Longer Funnies: Ghostbusters (NEVER funny), The Blues Brothers (NEVER funny), Mrs. Doubtfire (NEVER funny), Coming to America (NEVER funny), Three Amigos (NEVER funny), none of the Pink Panther comedies, Porky’s, The Philadelpia Story, Pillow Talk and Lover Come Back (Rock Hudson, Doris Day sexual comedies stopped being funny once the sexual revolution took hold in mid ’60s), none of the ZAZ comedies, Howard Hawks‘ Monkey Business, the broader sexual jokes in Billy Wilder‘s One, Two, Three, Irma La Douce and Kiss me Stupid, The Golden Child (NEVER funny), Withnail & I (NEVER funny).
HE’s Eternal Funnies: Superbad, Groundhog Day, Planes, Trains and Automobiles, The Graduate, Dr. Strangelove, Slapshot, The Big Lebowski, Duck Soup, A Night at the Opera, Bringing Up Baby, The Awful Truth, Rushmore, The Lady Eve, Some Like It Hot, Sullivan’s Travels, School of Rock, all of the earlier funnier Woody Allen comedies (What’s Up Tiger Lily to Annie Hall), A Fish Called Wanda, In The Loop, Pardon Us (1931 Laurel & Hardy prison comedy), The Producers, Blazing Saddles, Young Frankenstein, North to Alaska.
