“Comedy: How deep will the R-rated renaissance run?”

When you’re in the middle of a trend, sometimes it’s hard to see it. But not this one: R-rated comedies are hot as Steve Zeitchik (24 Frames/LAT) notes:

There have been very few surprise hits in this year of modest box office and relentless sequels. Topping the short list is “Bridesmaids,” which has stormed its way to nearly $160 million in domestic receipts. While not nearly the same sort of phenomenon, “Bad Teacher” has been a sleeper in its own right, garnering $79 million to date. And this weekend, “Horrible Bosses” got off to a solid start, taking in a higher-than-expected $28 million to beat out Kevin James’ “Zookeeper” as the weekend’s biggest new release. 

What these three films have in common is not only that they’re comedies but that they also are, of course, bawdy and R-rated. If “Bosses” is able to hits the $75-million mark, it will make 2011 the first year ever that at least four R-rated comedies have topped that number (joining “The Hangover: Part 2”).

All three of 2011’s racy originals, it should be said, were jump-started and greenlighted after “The Hangover” became the most successful R-rated comedy of all time in 2009, and all three are, in a sense, the first fruits of the post-”Hangover” boom. 

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But if this trio of summer originals is born of the “The Hangover,” what will these movies in turn generate in the next few years? Success tends to attract a crowd, which sometimes means pale knockoffs. “I think the quality will go down for a little while, because studios will be jumping all over these things, and that may just mean going as dirty as possible without actually making it original or comedic,” “Horrible Bosses” co-writer Jonathan Goldstein told 24 Frames.

First off, why do you think R-rated comedies apparently are resonating at the box office now? One thing is obvious: Each of these successful movies has a strong story concept, easy to market. Perhaps it’s just a cyclical thing. As Zeitchik notes in the article, it all started with National Lampoon’s Animal House and that led to the Porky’s franchise. Then years later, Revenge of the Nerds. Then later the sub-genre was revived by the American Pie series.

Maybe it’s just that every generation of teenagers need to have their fix of cinematic raunch.

Next question: How long do you think this trend will last? Still some legs to it or are we jumping the shark? This is an important concern for any of you working on an R-rated comedy because if the studios have bought a ton of these type of movies and the market starts to go soft, you could see a collapse in interest and their commercial viability.

For more of the LAT article, go here.

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