Summer Box Office: A Funny Thing Happened…
In a summer filled with ginormous superhero / monster / blockbuster / special effects out the ass movies, a funny thing happened: Four comedies have busted out with some startlingly good box office numbers worldwide:
The Heat: $128M (3 weeks)
This is the End: $97M (5 weeks)
Grown Ups 2: $44M (1 week)
Kevin Hart: Let Me Explain: $26M (2 weeks)
Granted those numbers are dwarfed by the results from movies like Iron Man 3, Star Trek Into Darkness, and Man of Steel, but while those budgets are astronomically high, anywhere from $150–250M, the average cost of the comedies listed above is about $40M, skewed significantly by Grown Ups 2 which cost a reported $80M. So while total B.O. may not compare to the franchise films, the ROI does.
The impact of comedy on the box office is even more noticeable if you figure in two animated movies heavy with humor: Despicable Me 2 and Monsters University, the former having grossed $472M worldwide and the latter $474M.
Looks like studios smart enough to green light some comedies are… cough-cough… laughing all the way to the bank.
So why the apparent resurgence of comedies? Allow me to posit two possible reasons:
* People have grown weary of the whole “we’re all doomed” trope. Post-apocalyptic, dystopia, or just simple depressing portents of the future, moviegoers have been hammered over the head with this stuff for over 5 years now. Yes, it was fresh in 2008 when The Dark Knight portrayed a uniquely different vision of the Batman saga, shifting it from bright comic book colors to much darker hues. But in that time span, it’s been one eschatological and nightmarish vision of existence after another, whether it’s The Hunger Games, 2012, Terminator Salvation, Transformers: Dark of the Moon, Thor, Captain America: The First Avenger, Marvel’s The Avengers, The Dark Knight Rises, Man of Steel, World War Z, Pacific Rim or even Wall-E, for heaven’s sake. Perhaps some moviegoers are saying, ‘Enough is enough! How about a few, ya’ know… laughs, okay?’ Indeed the fact that This is the End has succeeded could be instructive as the movie makes fun of the whole apocalyptic schtick. And when mainstream movies start sending up a trope, its recession may not be far behind: How can we take it seriously if we’re mocking it?
* The scope has gotten too damn big. Question: How many times can the fate of the world be a plot device? Every single one of those titles noted above calls into question the survivability of our Earth and the human species. As the centerpiece of a movie one time? Sure, that can work. Twice? Okay, there’s enough anxiety about our collective future to dig into the subject matter some more. But three times… four times… a dozen times? ‘Geezus, not this again?’ In this regard, This is the End is also instructive: Here the characters are confronted with this huge event, the end of the world. And what do these idiot guys spend time arguing about? Who gets to eat a chocolate bar? Is it okay to masturbate by using someone else’s Penthouse magazine for stimulation? Hey, I know! In the face of spiritual forces determining the fate of humankind, let’s produce a ridiculous DIY version of the sequel to Pineapple Express. See what they — and these other comedies — have done? They’ve brought the scope of the story down to actual human size. Yet another movie where it’s the fate of the Earth in the balance… or Melissa McCarthy and Sandra Bullock making vagina jokes? Something relatable, something less wearying, something more… fun.
Look, it’s too early to say that comedy is a comeback kid in 2013. Let’s see how some of the other movies slated to debut this summer do including the action-comedy Red 2, Girl Most Likely, The To Do List (which has the feel of a surprise hit), Blue Jasmine, and We’re the Millers.
But after a few years of retrenchment and being batted about the head by the emerging conventional wisdom that ‘comedy doesn’t travel well’ (i.e., soft sales in the increasingly important international market), here we are with some of the more notable movie successes this summer being ones filled with laughs.
And as far as writers who specialize in writing comedies, that is a laughing matter.
UPDATE: A nice bit of synchronicity with this article from FilmDrunk: The Problem of Scenery over Choreography: Why Most of This Summer’s Action Films Have Kind of Sucked:
While it feels good to rip something on humanitarian grounds, where you get to paint yourself as the Mother Theresa of film critics, I’ve never particularly cared how many people die in an action movie, and I honestly don’t think other people care that much either. Most of us don’t go to the movies for morality. Arnold kills at least 100 faceless henchmen in Commando and I’m fine with that, the more gruesome the better, especially if he gets in a really sweet burn as they’re falling to their deaths, or being burned alive. The root of the problem, I think, is that in racing to see who can create the “biggest scale,” all these scenes became more about the stuff breaking than the people fighting. Those critics are right in the sense that prioritizing smashing CGI buildings over the characters fighting is a bit dehumanizing, but I don’t think that makes the movies immoral, or “wrong”, just… boring.
It probably started with Independence Day, and it’s not hard to imagine why. I can still remember having my mind blown by that exploding White House in the trailer. But 17 years later we’re still blowing up the White House, and it’s goddamn boring now. We’ve blown up buildings, monuments, cities… what’s next, continents? Planets? It doesn’t sound that interesting. We’re all scaled out.
In other words, sometimes less is more.