544 Best Releases From the Genre Comedy (Page 14)

Tuca & Bertie Season 3 finds Tuca (Tiffany Haddish) and Bertie (Ali Wong) rebuilding their lives in the season two Bird Town flooding and moss infestation aftermath. They’ve got promising leads professionally with new jobs on the horizon. Plus, they’re both in solid relations. Bertie with adorkable long-term boyfriend Speckle (Steven Yeun) and Tuca’s new beau Figgy (Matthew Rhys). The two bird besties might be leveling up in careers and personal life, but there’s always some drama waiting around the corner to pounce in and disrupt their technicolor dreams.  Continue Reading →

The Kung Fu Panda universe is no stranger to the small screen. Previously, Kung Fu Panda: Legends of Awesomeness and Kung Fu Panda: The Paws of Destiny ensured that audiences could watch more antics of Po the Panda in the comfort of their home. But the newest expansion of this franchise, the Netflix program Kung Fu Panda: The Dragon Knight, breaks new ground by being the first of these shows to feature Jack Black reprising the role as Po.  Continue Reading →

Things are bad, folks. They’re relentlessly bad, with no sign that it’s going to let up any time soon. All we can do to stop ourselves from spiraling into the abyss is cling to the little things in life, like an ice cream cone, petting a dog, or taking a long bath. Add to that list is What We Do in the Shadows, now in its fourth season, and still just as fresh and funny as ever, with dirty jokes that belie its gentle, loving core. Continue Reading →

It's no understatement to say that Taika Waititi's Thor: Ragnarok was a welcome shot in the arm for both the titular God of Thunder (Chris Hemsworth) and the Marvel Cinematic Universe as a whole. There's something to be said for cutting out the creaky Shakespearean grandeur of the first two Thors in favor of whiz-bang sitcom theatrics, with a dash of Guardians of the Galaxy's signature irreverence thrown in, all leather and ironic needle-drops and "well that happened"s. The result was a whiz-bang sci-fi action comedy that made a buttload of cash, extended Thor's lease on cinematic life, and catapulted Waititi into Hollywood's A-list. Continue Reading →

With the first season of Only Murders in the Building, creators Steve Martin and John Hoffman found success through a tricky balance -- between young and old, between thriller and comedy, between murder and levity. With Selena Gomez and Martin Short returning to join Martin as the unlikely podcasting trio, the Hulu series leans on the chemistry of its three stars. The resulting second season overachieves, brimming with confidence, comedy, scares, and a balanced tone. Continue Reading →

As comic premises go, the notion of portraying people in the movie industry as pretentious vain, shallow, sex-crazed glory-hungry goofballs is about as close to shooting fish in a barrel as one can possibly get. Therefore, the trick to pulling off something along these lines is not by pretending that one is making some bold artistic statement, but by striving to make sure that it is actually funny. Continue Reading →

(This review is part of our coverage of the 2022 Tribeca Film Festival.) Continue Reading →

Adam Sandler doesn’t need to earn any good karma. With a comedy career spanning 25 years and a dramatic career consisting of two decades worth, though more sparingly, of working with auteur filmmakers, the Sandman has been given the green light around Hollywood. And more importantly, he’s been given a blank(ish) check by Netflix, the service most associated with streaming despite its recent struggles. Continue Reading →

In 1974, a crane operator named Maurice Flitcroft watched the Piccadilly World Match Play Championship (a golf tournament) and decided that he would take up the game. Not as a fun new hobby, though. No, he intended to play at the British Open. Supported by his wife Jean, Maurice did indeed enter and play in the qualifying round of the Open after fibbing on his paperwork that he was a professional. He scored 121 and ended up summarily banned. Over the years, Flitcroft would attempt to re-enter the Open, using costumes and pseudonyms. If this all sounds handcrafted for immortalization on film, then you’re in luck.   Continue Reading →

Hal Needham's good-old-boy romp is still as silly and dumb and charming as it was nearly a half-century ago. I have spent the last hour or so trying to figure out a way into this piece commemorating the 45th anniversary of Smokey and the Bandit, a goofy exercise in hicksploitation that exceeded all expectations to become one of the biggest hits of 1977. On the one hand, the film is an undeniably puerile conglomeration of noisy car crashes and jokes that were on the retrograde side even back in the day. On the other, it’s a film that’s entertained me mightily over the years and still does.  That said, I would never refer to Smokey and the Bandit as a “guilty pleasure,” because that would suggest that I feel some degree of embarrassment over my admiration for it. That’s simply not true—as dumb as it is, it does have a certain charm that helps move it along while (mostly) overlooking its shortcomings. Continue Reading →

We love a “complicated” guy in pop culture, don’t we? Whether he’s just a prickly jerk, like Dr. Gregory House, or a faithless cad like Don Draper, or an outright murderer like Walter White, we find ourselves rooting for these characters, and hoping they succeed despite exhibiting behavior that few people get away with in real life. That is, of course, the draw - they appeal to our id, that side of us that wishes we could get away with indiscriminately cheating on our spouses, or getting involved in a life of crime. Nevertheless, we don’t perceive female characters the same way, so it’s a bold move on creator Annie Weisman to put such a difficult character as Sheila Rubin front and center in her Apple TV series Physical. She’s back for a second season, moving closer to her goal of finding happiness and fulfillment as a professional exercise instructor, but not any happier or fulfilled anywhere else in her life. Continue Reading →

Expanding a television show that usually runs for twenty-five minutes into a full-length feature film can be patty hard. Sorry, I mean pretty hard. After spending so much time in director Loren Bouchard’s colorful, sardonic world filled with enough burger puns to fill a McDonald’s ball pit, it’s hard to resist that sort of thing.  Continue Reading →

Eugenio Derbez has followed all the proper steps for any comedic leading man, including breaking out with a movie whose success nobody saw coming (Instructions Not Included) to side roles in long-forgotten blockbusters (Geostorm). Now he's taken a cue from many other modern stars of the genre like Adam Sandler or Melissa McCarthy and moved to 'streaming service A-lister' with Hulu's latest, The Valet. Continue Reading →

The more things change, the more they stay the same. For the latest example of this phenomenon, notice how, 34 years after Who Framed Roger Rabbit? changed movies forever, moviegoers are getting another comedic mystery hinging on live-action humans interacting with famous cartoon characters. The shadow of Zemeckis' revolutionary blend of filmmaking styles looms large over its modern-day thematic successor, Chip ‘n Dale: Rescue Rangers.  Continue Reading →

With perhaps the single exception of Heaven’s Gate, perhaps no American film produced in the 1980s received more bad press, critical hostility and commercial indifference than Elaine May’s Ishtar. Scathing press coverage revolved around its enormous budget—which extended to the reviews, many of which felt as if they were written by investors rather than critics—and studio machinations pretty much ensured that it would fail. Audiences stayed away in droves; as May herself once quipped, “If all the people who hate Ishtar had seen it, I would be a rich woman today.” Continue Reading →

Season 1 of Hacks literally left things up in the air with Deborah Vance (Jean Smart) and Ava (Hannah Einbinder), as they boarded Vance’s private jet back to Las Vegas. Deborah has convinced reluctant writer Ava to join her on tour. Unbeknownst to Deborah, Ava’s aired their dirty laundry via email to a team of British writers, who are keen to use the material as inspiration for a horrible boss-type sitcom. Ava’s in full crisis mode when news of her email reaches manager Jimmy (Paul W. Downs) as she boards the flight.  Continue Reading →

Just when you think we’ve reached peak saturation in true crime adaptations, well…here’s one more. However, though Hulu’s Candy is the first of two takes on the same 40 year-old murder to come out this year (HBO Max’s Love and Death, starring Elizabeth Olsen and Lily Rabe, is the other, release date TBA), for the first few episodes at least it treats its gruesome, sobering subject with respect and seriousness, and the individuals involved as real people as opposed to caricatures and archetypes. It also goes beyond the crime itself, depicting a not-too-distant past when women admitting that they were bored and unhappy was treated as a grievous personal failing. Continue Reading →

Action films love using Nazis as the villains because they’re unquestionably evil, wear scary uniforms, and are fun to watch get punched in the mouth. Now that modern-day Nazism hides behind bad haircuts on television and schlubby dudes wearing hunting jackets, it’s harder to achieve that visceral thrill of seeing a Nazi get his ass kicked. The Takedown makes a strong attempt, though.  Continue Reading →

Jabberwocky, Terry Gilliam’s solo directorial debut, is a fractured fairy tale of sorts that remains as bizarre and unique today as when it first hit theaters in 1977. It is ostensibly a PG-rated fantasy with all the elements one might associate with such a prospect. There’s (Spoiler Alert) a stalwart hero, a beautiful princess, a fearsome beast, a kingdom in peril, and a happy ending. However, it skews them in strange and occasionally gruesome ways until none plays out as expected. Although admittedly uneven in parts, the result is an undeniably entertaining and occasionally outrageous work. It serves as an impressively formed and executed debut of one of the era’s more compelling and unusual filmmaking voices.  Continue Reading →

Vanessa Bayer, known for her time on SNL, joins the ranks of recent alums hitting the TV market with her own show, I Love That For You. Writing and starring, Bayer plays Joanna Gold, a Midwestern woman chasing her dream. At the start, she breaks free of her coddling parents and Costco career. She then achieves her dream of becoming a host on QVC-esque Special Value Network (SVN).  Continue Reading →

There’s something strangely quaint about watching The Rock nearly 26 years after its theatrical release. It’s a bit like listening to the hard rock of a generation ago and hearing just how, well, soft it seems in comparison to what’s followed. (The kind of soft-ass shit Captain Darrow (Tony Todd) doesn’t like.) Considering where director Michael Bay will take his films after 1996, it feels odd to label this offering maximalist even though, objectively, it’s accurate.  Continue Reading →