Different types of comedy films

Comedy films are usually split into two main categories : comedian-led (with well-timed gags, jokes, or sketches) and situation-comedies, which are told within a narrative.

Comedy hybrids collaborate with genres, such as musical-comedy, horror-comedy, and comedy-thriller. There are also sub genres such as romantic comedy, crime/caper comedy, teen comedy etc. There are also various types of comedy, such as :


Slapstick
Slapstick was predominant in the earliest silent films, as an alternative to sound.They were popular with non-English speaking audiences in urban areas and were also used as a means of escapism and induced sadistic pleasures out of audiences, as they would laugh at the character(s) foolish behaviour. The term slapstick came from the wooden sticks that clowns slapped together to promote audience applause.

Slapstick involves aggressive, physical, and visual action, including harmless or painless cruelty an violence and often sight gags (e.g., a custard pie in the face, collapsing houses, a loss of trousers or skirts, runaway crashing cars, people chases, etc). Slapstick often required exquisite timing and well-timed performance skills. Notable comedians of slapstick were Laurel and Hardy, W. C. Fields, The Three Stooges. Slapstick evolved in the form of screwball comedies in the 1930s and 1940s.

Examples of slapstick include and Jim Carrey in Ace Ventura, Pet Detective (1993) and The Mask (1994).

The Blake Edwards series of Pink Panther films with Peter Sellers as bumbling Inspector Clouseau (especially in the second film of the series, A Shot in the Dark (1964) are successful examples.

Screwball
Screwball comedies, a sub-genre of romantic comedy films, were predominant from the mid-1930s to the mid-1940s. The word 'screwball' denotes lunacy and erratic behavior.

These films combine farce, slapstick, and the witty dialogue of more sophisticated films. They were light-hearted, sophisticated romantic stories, which focused on a battle of the sexes in which both co-protagonists try to outwit or outmaneuver each other. They usually include visual gags (with some slapstick), wacky characters, identity reversals (or cross-dressing), a fast-paced plot, and wise-cracking dialogue which reflect sexual tensions and conflicts in the relationship , as seen in The Awful Truth (1937).

Black or Dark Comedy

These are dark, sarcastic, humorous, or sardonic stories that examine darker subjects such as war, death, or illness. Two of the greatest black comedies ever made include Stanley Kubrick's Cold War classic satire, Dr Stangelove:How I Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb(1964), which spoofed political and military institutions with Peter Sellers in a triple role (as a Nazi scientist, a British major, and the US President), and Robert Altman's M*A*S*H (1970), which was an anti-war black comedy set during the Korean War. Tim Burton's Beetlejuice (1988) was also an example of black comedy.

Parody or Spoof

These specific types of comedy (also called put-ons, send-ups, charades, lampoons, take-offs, jests, mockumentaries.) are usually a humorous take-off that ridicules or imitates the style, conventions, characters , or motifs of a serious work, film, performer, or genre, including:

• 
• Military spoof (Stripes 1981), Sgt Bilko (1996),
  
• Quasi-horror film Young Frankenstein (1974) ,
  
• Science fiction spoofs such as Spaceballs (1987), Mars Attacks (1996)
• Jim Abrahams' comedy Airplane! (1980) - a parody of the earlier disaster series of Airport (1970) films
  
• The Naked Gun (1988) series parodied TV cop shows
• Abrahams' military comedy Hot Shots! (1991) was a genre parody/spoof of Top Gun (1986)
  
• Carl Reiner's Fatal Instinct (1993) spoofed suspense thrillers and murder mysteries such as Basic Instinct (1992)
  
• The Austin Powers films (1997, 1999, 2002) parodies of the James Bond 007 films
• The Scream films (1996, 1997, 2000) spoofs of slasher horror films
• Barry Sonnenfeld's Men in Black (1997) - a sci-fi comedy farce based on a comic book series that poked fun at alien invasion films, with Tommy Lee Jones and Will Smith as government agents battling about 1500 Earth-dwelling, other-worldly extra-terrestrials in the New York area; a sequel appeared in 2002
• Last Action Hero (1993) - a spoof of action films

This category may also include these widely diverse forms of satire - usually displayed as political or social commentary, for example:

• Terry Gilliam's hilarious Monty Python's The Meaning of Life (1983) and The Life of Brian (1979) - an irreverent parody of religious films, which was controversial due to its satirical biblical references
  

In many comedies, there is much overlap with the category of 'farce', since the term has now been broadened and extended (from the early part of the 20th century). Now, farces and farcical elements in films, may include fairly outrageous plots, unlikely and absurd circumstances, frantic-paced action, mistaken identities, lots of verbal humor and physical slapstick. Recently, farces have deliberately and satirically begun mocking established genres and standard film conventions themselves, such as

• Scary Movies series, Epic Movie(2007), Disaster Movie (2008), Meet the Spartans (2008) Superhero Movie (2008), Date Movie (2006) mocked Hollywood blockbusters such as 300, Fantastic 4, The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, Cloverfield and other successful films
• UK comedies: the British Ealing Studios comedies (The Lavender Hill Mob (1951), the grotesque commentaries found in the Monty Python films, Tom Jones (1963)
• Other recent examples: There's Something About Mary (1998), South Park: Bigger Longer & Uncut (1999), Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy (2004), The 40 Year Old Virgin (2005), The Simpsons Movie (2007).

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