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Trash Comedy: |
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The
flourishing and wildly popular genre of trash comedy is not one with which film
critics like to spend much time.
For most of
the ‘90s, it was enough to make a dismissive joke about all those Pauly Shore –
or, later, Adam Sandler – vehicles: artless movies with endless, low, gross
jokes about bodily functions, the kind of anonymous films that quickly ended up
on video shelves.
But There’s Something About Mary (1998) was a trash comedy success that no commentator could afford to
ignore. The Farrelly brothers carefully blended sweetness with romance,
grossness with old-fashioned slapstick, nerdiness with cool: suddenly, the
set-pieces about that curious gel in Cameron Diaz’s hair, or Ben Stiller’s
traumatic memory of having his member caught in the zipper of his trousers,
found their place in a proudly mainstream movie.
At the dawn
of the new millennium, the trash genre clocked up several more box-office
milestones: Scary Movie (2000), probably the most popular comedy of Afro-American
origin in cinema history, and Eddie Murphy’s Nutty Professor II: The Klumps (2000). Even Sandler jumped on the bandwagon, swapping the
sentimentality of Big Daddy (1999)
for the messy antics of Little Nicky (2000).
It is
almost axiomatic that trash comedy is a very male, indeed boyish genre. Bring It On (2000), about ruthless cheerleaders, offers some vigorously vulgar moments for
the girls, and Superstar (1999) is a cult favourite among fans of Saturday
Night Live alumnus Molly Shannon. But, generally, trash comedies veer
towards all things mucky and masculine. Indeed, even a later inspired attempt
at star-powered female trash, the Cameron Diaz vehicle The Sweetest Thing (2002), was – very sadly – unable to spawn a
box-office trend; while girl-centred teen films with a dark and mucky edge,
like Ghost World (2001) and Juno (2007), wisely went a cooler,
droller route, separating themselves delicately from the trash.
But back to the boys. In particular – and this fact seems to have gone politely unnoticed
by many – trash comedies are mainly about asses, and the many horridly
wonderful trials to which they can be subjected. The long-forgotten Pauly Shore
prophesised the trend in Jury Duty (1995) – a saga in which, despite the
unsubtle protestation supplied by a theme song titled “I’m a Heterosexual”, our
hero is raped by a burly cell mate whilst dressed as a woman. He eventually
decides to shrug and go with the flow, doubtless following the lead of Joe E.
Brown at the end of Some Like it Hot (1959) and his immortal line: “Nobody’s
perfect”.
Trash
comedies are – in their own twisted way – the gayest genre in popular cinema.
Consider this checklist. In The Klumps,
a particularly unpleasant character is raped by a giant hamster (whom he
eventually learns to love). Little Nicky frequently returns to a gag concerning the many objects that can be inserted in
Hitler’s anus during his eternal spell in Hell. Scary Movie offers a veritable inventory of jokes involving every
kind of sexual penetration. And A Night
at the Roxbury (1998), with its foppish male buddies who can hardly bear to
be separated, unfolds like one long, crypto-gay giggle.
Indeed,
that last film gave birth to a true comic Superstar – Will Ferrell – who would
go on to make the comic convolutions of gay-but-not his A-1 speciality in the
likes of Talladega Nights: The Ballad of
Ricky Bobby (2006) and Blades of
Glory (2007). And then, just as trash comedy began to die – much to the
delight of many tut-tutting commentators – along came Judd Apatow, Seth Rogen
and the crew with Knocked Up (2007), Superbad (2007), The Pineapple Express (2008), up-fronting boyishness with a vengeance …
The history of this genre remains to be written in all its trashy glory.
MORE Trash comedy: Old School, Jackass, It Happened One Night, One Night at McCool's, Joe Dirt, The 40 Year Old Virgin © Adrian Martin
February 2001/January 2009
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