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What's so funny?

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I tried to watch Uncut Gems the other night, given the rave reviews, but just couldn't get past Adam Sandler in the lead role.  I never liked him as an actor and there was nothing that I saw in the first fifteen minutes that would convince me otherwise.  It was also the case with Punch-Drunk Love, which I had been shamed into watching only to find the same annoying Adam that I had grown to despise on screen.  He was one of the reasons I swore off SNL in the 90s only to regain interest in it during the Trump era.

Adam is probably a really nice guy.  Everyone says he is and recently he won the Mark Twain Prize for American Humor, which means he has the full respect of his peers.  It just isn't my kind of humor.  I can say that for a lot of comics these days, wondering out loud what anyone finds so funny about them.

I've tried watching what passes for humor on Netflix.  There are a slew of stand-up comics out there but the only guy I found really funny was Mo Amer.  I thought his short-lived television series Mo was great.  Most comedy today just seems like a bunch of puerile gags and pranks.   Like Mark Twain once noted, comedy has to have relevance, and Mo shows just what it is like for an illegal immigrant living in Texas while never losing sight of the humor in the situations he presents.

I was looking forward to The Interview but it was a real letdown.  Rogen and Franco made an extremely boring movie that never got past its flimsy set up.  Trey Parker and Matt Stone did a much better job with puppets in Team America.  Yet, Seth was really proud of his work and took offense to criticism, saying that it was "devastating" and that he knows persons who never recovered from scathing reviews.  Who knew comics could be so thin skinned?

A great part of comedy is being able to roll with the punches.  No stand-up comic has not faced an unruly crowd and in some cases been heckled off stage.  It goes with the territory.  Adam recovered from being booted from SNL in a big way.  Much of comedy is being able to take these hostile experiences and turn them into something funny.  The lovable loser still plays well.  Remember Rodney Dangerfield?

However, you see Chris Rock still smarting after the slap he took at the Oscars and you really have to wonder what's wrong with this guy?  His entire schtick is attacking persons for no reason but woe be it if someone claps back.  Not like I have anytime for Will Smith, but I think Chris got what he deserved.  He was lucky Sean Penn didn't punch him in the face after all his tasteless jokes of Jude Law a few years earlier.

I was disappointed to see Dave Chappelle take a similar cynical approach in one of his recent monologues.  He was criticized mostly for his transphobic jokes, but what got me was his deep-seated misogyny toward white women.  He just kept going on and on about all the naked young women in his neighborhood as if he lived in a nudist colony.  

I loved his old show on Comedy Central.  Sure he poked fun at people but also at himself.  One of his many great sketches was that of  Clayton Bigsby, which he made into a Frontline mockumentary, but success seemed to spoil him.  He now gets off on jokes about the trans couples he meets in diners.

To Adam's credit, he has a self-deprecating humor that can be amusing in small doses.  It's just that voice!  After a while it feels like finger nails on a chalkboard.

I prefer traditional sitcoms for the most part.  I loved the Office, the American version.  The British version not so much because Ricky Gervais is another guy I can only take in small doses.  I watched After Life at the suggestion of my daughter.  The first season was pretty good but after that it was just Ricky on his soap box, getting the best of everyone around him. Rainn Wilson as Dwight Schrute is another story.  This has to be one of the funniest television characters since Kramer of Seinfeld.  I chuckle just thinking about Dwight and couldn't resist my very own Dwight holding Dwight Funko Pop.

The Office brought back fond memories of the 70's when comedy was king.  There were so many great sitcoms it is hard to pick which one was best.  I'm surprised Netflix hasn't tapped into this gold mine rather than show reruns of That '70s Show, which has now been updated to the '90s.  I ended up buying the DVD boxed sets of The Mary Tyler Moore Show to share with the family and everyone loved it.

A good comedy has a beginning, middle and end.  It isn't just a collection of one-liners thrown at the wall, hoping that a few of them will stick.  This is basically the Adam Sandler approach to comedy.  You laugh at the idea of Zohan, but after a few minutes it just isn't funny anymore.  The same can be said of most comedies these days.   

It's pretty rare you come across a funny movie that can hold your attention throughout like Borat did.  Especially so when you think the film arose from the sketches Sacha Baron Cohen did on this hilarious show a few years back.  He wasn't so successful with Bruno.

Anyway, I don't think Mark Twain would be all that impressed with Adam Sandler or most of what passes for comedy these days.  The award is in his name only.

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