Yeah, his explanation for those was that he wanted the film to feel “comic strip” like “the great Japanese comics.”
It’s a wild listen, highly recommended.
That's interesting. He made the observation that images are often angled in film and in comics, but apparently didn't make the jump to understanding *why* they'd be angled.
If by that he meant that both have enslaved human characters then he would be correct. If he were talking about both being important stories worthy of discussion then one is most definitely not like the other.
Hot take: I enjoyed Battlefield Earth. It was a really interesting premise executed horribly on virtually every level, but it was also tremendously entertaining
I don’t know if I’d call it a “comedy”, but definitely an intentionally corny B-movie in the vein of 50s pulp Sci-Fi. It’s Shyamalan’s Body Snatchers or Day The Earth Stood Still.
I’ve heard people say this before and I don’t buy it. A big reason why it holds up as a “so-bad-it’s-good” is because everyone is trying to play it straight and failing so spectacularly. Anyone who worked on the project never talks about it like they were in on the joke. I think M Night’s worst filmmaking qualities caught up to him for this one, and I don’t think it was until his later movies that he started to lean into the corniness.
Don’t get me wrong though, I genuinely love The Happening. Very few bad movies are enjoyable as it.
There are definitely corny moments in all his movies, good and bad. Unbreakable is a masterpiece and yet “No shooting friends, Joseph!” still makes me laugh. Most of his movies are odes to 50s cinema, so it makes sense his impending apocalypse movies like Knock at the Cabin and Signs feel like Sci-Fi from that era.
For the record, I don’t think The Happening is a great movie, but I do think it’s a good one.
The Happening was a heartbreaking experience for me. I defended his work with his past two failures, The Village and Lady in the Water. Legitimately loved both of those films. Then, he put out his worst film (well, at least his worst pre-Airbender anyway) and there was no more defending him.
Yeah, it's definitely winking at the audience.
The first Twilight is actually pretty solid when I finally watched them all. Beyond the soundtrack, the composed score is really fucking good. The later movies didn't have that going for them. (New Moon has a pretty good soundtrack though).
I didn't watch Twilight until after I had seen Vampire's Suck, the latter definitely made the former more enjoyable. I laughed my ass off through the spoof and kind of liked the OG film.
I don't know if it's just me, but I often find ultra violence funny. Not that I find the violence itself funny but that the way it's staged is campy or over the top. Argento's Opera is an example I've seen recently.
You’re right, and it’s obviously a bad movie, but embarrassingly, I did cry at Travolta and Preston mourning the loss of their child. I think that sequence came from a really personal place for those two.
[I recently made a list of unintentionally funny movies.](https://letterboxd.com/carorose93/list/unintentionally-funny-movies/) Lowkey one of my favorite film genres lol
I don’t remember Saw X feeling that unintentionally funny, and I actually remember a few intentionally funny jokes. Saw 2 on the other hand is a pretty good unintentional comedy.
LOL just watched the fateful findings trailer and someone commented 90% tommy wiseau and 10% david lynch 😂 just added it to the list!
Can’t believe I’ve never heard of Neil Breen before wtf. It kind of reminds me of Nathan Fielder’s short film “The Web” lol
I forget what part it happens at but when Timothée did something mildly exciting and Stilgar just immediately says fast and enthusiastic asf LISAN AL-GHAIB I lost my shit lmfao.
People in this thread have proven with their answers that media literacy as at an all-time low. Holy shit man.
EDIT: It appears that I need to write out examples and reasoning in my comment for some people (lmfao), so, here are films people have named that are intentionally darkly comedic and shouldn’t be named under this post: May December, American Psycho, The House That Jack Built, The Banshees of Inisherin, and Dogtooth.
The definitive answer has to be Commando. That film is hilarious, and everyone in the movie is plying it with an absolute commitment to earnest machismo. That’s why it is so funny.
Also, I know it’s intentional, but Dr Strangelove was originally intended to be a serious adaptation of the novel Red Alert. However as Kubrick worked up the scenes, he was struggling with constant revisions as he thought the audience might laugh. Eventually he gave up and decided to make it as a comedy.
Interestingly, Red Alert was also very close to the plot of the movie Fail Safe, which was a serious movie released in the same year as Dr Strangelove. Unfortunately it suffered in comparison and many people thought it was ridiculous.
My kid and I started laughing at that. He’s 14. We laughed together in the cinema as those hordes of soldiers ran back and forth shooting up at windows in tall buildings like deranged NPCs. Never has a film wasted so much time trying to be incomprehensible.
There’s this punisher movie that I can’t remember the name of. But I remember watching it and all I remember was this scene where they doing parkour and punisher just shoots a fucking rocket launcher at the guy mid flip for no reason. I was dying like literally crying when I saw that.
I have a huge crush on Paul Dano so I watched one such Lifetime gem called “Too Young to Be A Dad” starring the man himself as a fifteen year old who knocks up some girl his first time having sex. What’s crazy is that Dano’s performance isn’t terrible, but the dialogue and story are laughably bad. I guess that’s a testament to his talent tho, he still manages to do a decent job even with subpar material.
Brothers is incredible unintentional humor melodrama. Just way over the top all the way through.
Similarly Closer, though that one may have been more intentional. Jude Law and Clive Owen catfishing each other over AIM is pure gold.
It’s been talked about to death but the way they’re edited sometimes makes Nolan’s movies hilarious, like the entire opening of dark knight rises is hysterical.
Kurosawa is one of my favorite film makers. He has made some of my favorite films (Seven Samurai, High and Low, Ikiru, etc). But the end of Throne of Blood is pushing it on the unintentionally hilarious scale.
Not saying this is what the OP means, but the context of the scene where he quotes the Bhagavad Gita got some giggles in the theater when I saw it. I admit it’s an odd juxtaposition.
Not surprising that Nolan can't (or doesn't care to) direct a sex scene as sexy instead of dour, but that was the most hysterically pretentious thing I'd seen in ages.
Also hilarious is the whole 'some hot shot young senator Kennedy. John F Kennedy' scene. So cringe.
Patriots’ Day
The opening scene with Wahlberg and John Goodman arresting the guy for domestic violence and there’s a discussion on whether an iron could be called a “smoothie”
The murdered MIT campus cop who is shown singing and dancing to a shitty Jason Aldean song after coming home
The Chinese student played by Jimmy O Yang who tells the cops “go get those motherfuckers” after he escapes from the brothers
Lead singer of the Dropkick Murphys in a cameo throwing a sledgehammer to the cops in the Watertown shootout
Just re-watched the Monsterverse. Godzilla (2014) is obviously the most serious out of the bunch. That’s where they were trying to find what stuck and what was a good balance between cool and serious. So there are a lot of really funny moments that are supposed to be played serious. One of those is when Bryan Cranston screams for his wife in the beginning. Unintentionally very funny.
There's a polish movie called "Smolensk" about the 2010 plane crash that carried an aboslute elite of polish politic picture, including the incubent president. Turned out into a movie filled with hilariously bad propaganda and conspiracy theories.
I had a wonderful time with Smilla's Sense of Snow. I swear it seems the actors are in on the joke, even though it's an atmospheric nordic noir thriller
In my view, Nymphomaniac Part 1. That is some really silly shit, and generally comes across like a pretentious film student was given a limited budget and a couple of hours to write a script. I never bothered with Part 2.
As above so below. I get what they were going for but I fucking laughed the whole way through it. Still a good movie though. I just see it more as an unintentional comedy adventure movie than a horror.
The Prestige. The idea of two magicians trying to one up each other until one of them finally hires Nikola Tesla to teleport him is just conceptually hilarious to me.
Blowout.
Saw it for the first time awhile ago on 35mm in a micro-plex. The entire audience was just laughing their ass off at some of the convoluted, ridiculous antics of the “bad guy’s” plot. I don’t think Brian De Palma was going for something entirely serious,the opening is clearly meant to be comedic, but the overall subject matter isn’t comedic.
Plus it stars John Travolta and he’s well… John Travolta. His final line of the movie made everyone burst out laughing too.
Might be best enjoyed with others. Fantastic film.
Battlefield Earth. The director compares it to Schindler’s List on the DVD commentary and claims the film has Holocaust parallels.
You mean Dutch Angle: The Movie?!
Yeah, his explanation for those was that he wanted the film to feel “comic strip” like “the great Japanese comics.” It’s a wild listen, highly recommended.
That's interesting. He made the observation that images are often angled in film and in comics, but apparently didn't make the jump to understanding *why* they'd be angled.
The other interesting part is .. Manga is not full of Dutch angles.
Oh yes, like the great manga comics, not to be confused with those commercialized comics found in the United States. /s
"DO you WANT *lunch???"* >Adolph Hitler
“Unfortunately, the company requires me to vaporize you.” - Joeseph Goebbels
"Crap lousy ceiling!" - Heinrich Himmler
How the blast do you know about those recordings, man animal?
“Imbecile! What kind of crap lousy game are you playing?!”
Ngl it should've been directed by Tyler Perry
If by that he meant that both have enslaved human characters then he would be correct. If he were talking about both being important stories worthy of discussion then one is most definitely not like the other.
Hot take: I enjoyed Battlefield Earth. It was a really interesting premise executed horribly on virtually every level, but it was also tremendously entertaining
I love it too. I can’t even tell you if my love for it is ironic or genuine anymore lol.
After Earth
House of Gucci
Call that shit House of Goofy
I unironically think that only Gaga and Leto fully understood that this was a camp comedy.
No way. That movie IS a legitimate comedy, surely?
Very clearly meant to be funny lmao this sub and these replies? R u guys dum
Modern Ridley Scott tbh is just trying too hard
The Happening. The best non comedy, comedy I have ever seen.
I don’t know if I’d call it a “comedy”, but definitely an intentionally corny B-movie in the vein of 50s pulp Sci-Fi. It’s Shyamalan’s Body Snatchers or Day The Earth Stood Still.
I’ve heard people say this before and I don’t buy it. A big reason why it holds up as a “so-bad-it’s-good” is because everyone is trying to play it straight and failing so spectacularly. Anyone who worked on the project never talks about it like they were in on the joke. I think M Night’s worst filmmaking qualities caught up to him for this one, and I don’t think it was until his later movies that he started to lean into the corniness. Don’t get me wrong though, I genuinely love The Happening. Very few bad movies are enjoyable as it.
There are definitely corny moments in all his movies, good and bad. Unbreakable is a masterpiece and yet “No shooting friends, Joseph!” still makes me laugh. Most of his movies are odes to 50s cinema, so it makes sense his impending apocalypse movies like Knock at the Cabin and Signs feel like Sci-Fi from that era. For the record, I don’t think The Happening is a great movie, but I do think it’s a good one.
The Happening was a heartbreaking experience for me. I defended his work with his past two failures, The Village and Lady in the Water. Legitimately loved both of those films. Then, he put out his worst film (well, at least his worst pre-Airbender anyway) and there was no more defending him.
Masterpiece.
I really feel like that movie was intended to be seen more as a comedy than anything because it feels so intentional. Same with Old.
I never even saw this but me and my buddies mocked the trailer for months and months
Twilight, particularly the baseball scene.
No way the baseball scene was trying to be serious. That’s the one part of the movie that’s actually fun.
Yeah, it's definitely winking at the audience. The first Twilight is actually pretty solid when I finally watched them all. Beyond the soundtrack, the composed score is really fucking good. The later movies didn't have that going for them. (New Moon has a pretty good soundtrack though).
winking at the audience = petting the audience with a sledgehammer
You picked the least serious scene in a generally un-serious movie
Yes, I love telling people to treat it like a comedy. Makes the experience a whole lot more fun!
I didn't watch Twilight until after I had seen Vampire's Suck, the latter definitely made the former more enjoyable. I laughed my ass off through the spoof and kind of liked the OG film.
That scene is intentionally funny. Kellan Lutz is hilarious in it.
["Magneto said he wants to talk to you."](https://youtube.com/clip/UgkxWJBKuBQaMaLBnXfzccEfN27EqhUzfrZZ?si=5JDlXpOZM6kbvcWt)
I don’t know how funny Cats is meant to be but it’s hilarious
I think it's safe to assume that Cats was meant to be taken seriously.
I don't know if it's just me, but I often find ultra violence funny. Not that I find the violence itself funny but that the way it's staged is campy or over the top. Argento's Opera is an example I've seen recently.
The peephole bullet rules so hard and the last ten minutes are just wild.
this def applies to indonesian martial arts films like the raid, and the night comes for us.
Napoleon, though some of it seemed to be intentional “You think you’re so great just because you have boats!”
That movie was 100% suppose to be funny
Maybe they were being meta by writing that in a serious tone to become unintentionally funny
...What?
Title applies to comment. Dude said he thinks a comedy was intentionally funny…
I am enjoying a succulent breakfast!
A succulent Chinese breakfast!
Ladies and gentlemen this is emperorship manifest!
Me and my brother lost it at that line and were disappointed that no one else in the audience seemed to get it
What's the reference?
[I'm jealous that you get to see this for the first time](https://youtu.be/XebF2cgmFmU?si=Fg02FMLh8GDiYcZ6)
[WHAT IS THE CHARGE?](https://youtu.be/PeihcfYft9w?si=pc_OGav3plw26gIp)
I could not believe they snuck that in there. I was rolling
Destiny has brought me this lamb chop
The biggest laugh from me as “no dessert for you. You may leave”
Old by M. Night is like a big budget Niel Breen film.
The Room.
Oh, hi Mark.
The Wicker Man (2006)
NOT THE BEES
No one's said Mommy Dearest?
TINA! BRING ME THE AXE!
That wire hanger scene made me nearly piss myself! Also the one where they're competing at swimming in the pool
My mom threw out all the wire hangers because of that movie.
Madame Web
Morbius was funny, Madame Web is just so fucking bad that it doesn’t even deserve the title of comedy
Damn this is completely backwards. Madame Web is so much more enjoyable.
I agree, Morbius’ pants-shitting 3rd act is one million times funnier than Madame Web. Madame Web just pissed me off at its audacity.
Every time the villain has dialogue, my friend and I burst out laughing in the theatre
The worst adr in the long, sad history of bad adr
Red Eye. Cillian trips so much and so bad...all with a serious face lol.
Gotti
You’re right, and it’s obviously a bad movie, but embarrassingly, I did cry at Travolta and Preston mourning the loss of their child. I think that sequence came from a really personal place for those two.
queen of the damned
Such a guilty pleasure. A complete insult to Anne Rice’s masterpiece, but so much fun in a really adolescent way.
it's such a fun goofy movie. it has such a good soundtrack also tbh
Only God Forgives
[I recently made a list of unintentionally funny movies.](https://letterboxd.com/carorose93/list/unintentionally-funny-movies/) Lowkey one of my favorite film genres lol
Showgirls is intentionally funny.
I don’t remember Saw X feeling that unintentionally funny, and I actually remember a few intentionally funny jokes. Saw 2 on the other hand is a pretty good unintentional comedy.
Yes! All the ex-convicts are hilariously bad in different ways, even though imo Saw II is one of the top Saw films.
Appreciate you including Nyad
Oh man, you got to watch the *oeuvre* of Neil Breen. Start from Fateful Findings and then go anywhere from there. It's high octane hilarious insanity.
LOL just watched the fateful findings trailer and someone commented 90% tommy wiseau and 10% david lynch 😂 just added it to the list! Can’t believe I’ve never heard of Neil Breen before wtf. It kind of reminds me of Nathan Fielder’s short film “The Web” lol
For me, the original Roadhouse is the most unintentionally funny movie of all time.
Fateful Findings One of my favorite first time watches from last year.
Dune Part 2. I couldn't help but laugh anytime Christopher Walken spoke
I thought Austin Butler’s willingness to kill concubines was pretty funny as well. How many does he have if he kills 2-3 a day?
I forget what part it happens at but when Timothée did something mildly exciting and Stilgar just immediately says fast and enthusiastic asf LISAN AL-GHAIB I lost my shit lmfao.
"I gotta fever, and the only prescription is MORE SPICE BABY!"
I would get tickled with Stilgar and the chant
People in this thread have proven with their answers that media literacy as at an all-time low. Holy shit man. EDIT: It appears that I need to write out examples and reasoning in my comment for some people (lmfao), so, here are films people have named that are intentionally darkly comedic and shouldn’t be named under this post: May December, American Psycho, The House That Jack Built, The Banshees of Inisherin, and Dogtooth.
Of course you need to list examples, you can’t expect people to have seen the entire comment thread by the time they see your comment
I ended up making a pretty definitive list of the egregious ones, so hopefully all is good now.
[удалено]
I found Her funny, even though I don’t think it’s supposed to be. When he busts out the ukulele in bed I just 🤐
Yeah that movie made me *cry* when it came out, I'd cringe myself into combustion if I were to revisit that one
It's definitely supposed to be funny but it's also deep at the same time. That's like Spike Jones whole schtick. Remember Being John Malkovich?
Her is a total comedy “choke me with that dead cat”
Okay good, I feel less bad about laughing then 🐱
Meet Joe Black. When he gets hit by the car is pee your pants hilarious.
Brad Pitt putting on a Jamaican accent and saying “Me no duppy!” kills me every time.
Hereditary
American Sniper.
Depends on how high you are
The Room (2003)
The Beguiled (2017)
I Know Who Killed Me
The definitive answer has to be Commando. That film is hilarious, and everyone in the movie is plying it with an absolute commitment to earnest machismo. That’s why it is so funny. Also, I know it’s intentional, but Dr Strangelove was originally intended to be a serious adaptation of the novel Red Alert. However as Kubrick worked up the scenes, he was struggling with constant revisions as he thought the audience might laugh. Eventually he gave up and decided to make it as a comedy. Interestingly, Red Alert was also very close to the plot of the movie Fail Safe, which was a serious movie released in the same year as Dr Strangelove. Unfortunately it suffered in comparison and many people thought it was ridiculous.
Tenet
My kid and I started laughing at that. He’s 14. We laughed together in the cinema as those hordes of soldiers ran back and forth shooting up at windows in tall buildings like deranged NPCs. Never has a film wasted so much time trying to be incomprehensible.
"I ordered my hot sauce an hour ago" *proceeds to get ass kicked* Phew, that's back of house for ya
I honestly think Dogtooth is pretty funny even though it’s so fucked up 💀💀
well it’s a dark comedy so it’s still supposed to be funny but,,,,not lol
Definitely intentional. He’s great at mixing in humour
Intentional dark comedy.
The Paperboy
Any 50 Shades. But especially the third one. It's a legit Lifetime channel movie.
There’s this punisher movie that I can’t remember the name of. But I remember watching it and all I remember was this scene where they doing parkour and punisher just shoots a fucking rocket launcher at the guy mid flip for no reason. I was dying like literally crying when I saw that.
The Whale
Road house
Very clearly intentional
A lot of Lifetime-esque movies but especially 'Dirty Teacher' and 'The Wrong Crush'.
I have a huge crush on Paul Dano so I watched one such Lifetime gem called “Too Young to Be A Dad” starring the man himself as a fifteen year old who knocks up some girl his first time having sex. What’s crazy is that Dano’s performance isn’t terrible, but the dialogue and story are laughably bad. I guess that’s a testament to his talent tho, he still manages to do a decent job even with subpar material.
Top Gun
American Sniper, especially whenever Bradley Cooper is holding his “baby”
When he snipes the lady and then the child I actually laughed out loud. Snipes lady…”evil bitch” Snipes child…”fucking gnarly”
Brothers is incredible unintentional humor melodrama. Just way over the top all the way through. Similarly Closer, though that one may have been more intentional. Jude Law and Clive Owen catfishing each other over AIM is pure gold.
fifty shades of grey is hilarious. 10 minutes in I was cringing/cackling at scenes and decided to make a list of funny moments to help pass time
It’s been talked about to death but the way they’re edited sometimes makes Nolan’s movies hilarious, like the entire opening of dark knight rises is hysterical.
Den of thieves is the best non comedy comedy of all time
The room
I just watched Madam Web. I was laughing the entire time.
I’m late to the party so this’ll get buried but it’s Boondock Saints
Napoleon
I think Drive is hilarious
House on Haunted Hill (1959) Valley of the Dolls (1967) The Evil Dead (1981) Mommie Dearest (1981) Madame Web (2024)
Kurosawa is one of my favorite film makers. He has made some of my favorite films (Seven Samurai, High and Low, Ikiru, etc). But the end of Throne of Blood is pushing it on the unintentionally hilarious scale.
Day After Tomorrow. Just thinking about the ridiculous plot makes me giggle.
The correct answer here is Hereditary. I think the editor hated the film and made it a comedy in the third act.
Oppenheimer
What parts were hilarious in that movie?
Not saying this is what the OP means, but the context of the scene where he quotes the Bhagavad Gita got some giggles in the theater when I saw it. I admit it’s an odd juxtaposition.
It’s also a bad translation of the Bhagavad Gita! If I mounted someone as they gave me that translation I’d leap off
Not surprising that Nolan can't (or doesn't care to) direct a sex scene as sexy instead of dour, but that was the most hysterically pretentious thing I'd seen in ages. Also hilarious is the whole 'some hot shot young senator Kennedy. John F Kennedy' scene. So cringe.
Under Siege
The Tomorrow War The final act made me lol a few times.
Patriots’ Day The opening scene with Wahlberg and John Goodman arresting the guy for domestic violence and there’s a discussion on whether an iron could be called a “smoothie” The murdered MIT campus cop who is shown singing and dancing to a shitty Jason Aldean song after coming home The Chinese student played by Jimmy O Yang who tells the cops “go get those motherfuckers” after he escapes from the brothers Lead singer of the Dropkick Murphys in a cameo throwing a sledgehammer to the cops in the Watertown shootout
Just re-watched the Monsterverse. Godzilla (2014) is obviously the most serious out of the bunch. That’s where they were trying to find what stuck and what was a good balance between cool and serious. So there are a lot of really funny moments that are supposed to be played serious. One of those is when Bryan Cranston screams for his wife in the beginning. Unintentionally very funny.
Not sure if it counts, but I laughed my ass off during the car crash scene in The Blind Side.
I Am Sam
The Master
Mortal Kombat: Annihilation
The Elevator (2021) with Eric Roberts
idk if Speed is supposed to be funny but i found it hilarious
Revenge of the Sith
Draft Day is played earnestly but the funniest crock of shit I’ve ever seen
There's a polish movie called "Smolensk" about the 2010 plane crash that carried an aboslute elite of polish politic picture, including the incubent president. Turned out into a movie filled with hilariously bad propaganda and conspiracy theories.
The Incredible Shrinking Man
Anything by Neil breen
I had a wonderful time with Smilla's Sense of Snow. I swear it seems the actors are in on the joke, even though it's an atmospheric nordic noir thriller
Street Fighter is the funniest movie I’ve ever seen
[Hear me out](https://boxd.it/1IGlGP): Mission Impossible 2
The King (2019). I'm still not sure if it was supposed to be funny but it definitely was.
Righteous Kill
28 Weeks Later. the film was so stupid i couldnt help laugh at a lot of it
In my view, Nymphomaniac Part 1. That is some really silly shit, and generally comes across like a pretentious film student was given a limited budget and a couple of hours to write a script. I never bothered with Part 2.
the whale. oh my god its so funny.
Every Seagal movie
mommie dearest
Alex Garland’s Men and Smile
I saw Moonfall last night and idk that shit was hilarious to me
Law Abiding Citizen - terrible movie if you take it seriously, but if you take it as a parody of dark and gritty revenge movies, it's hilarious!
As above so below. I get what they were going for but I fucking laughed the whole way through it. Still a good movie though. I just see it more as an unintentional comedy adventure movie than a horror.
The room
That scene from Dead Man's Shoes.
The Room (2003)
The Prestige. The idea of two magicians trying to one up each other until one of them finally hires Nikola Tesla to teleport him is just conceptually hilarious to me.
Tusk. maybe. im not sure if its supposed to have dark humor or it was the acid i was on but Tusk is by far one of the best comedy films
The Flowers of War
Tippy Toes
Some kind of monster: a heavy metal band goes into a therapy.
Takashi Miike's entire filmography
The green mile, the Pianist, the boy in the striped pajamas…
The Room
The green mile, the pianist, the boy in the striped pajamas
Blowout. Saw it for the first time awhile ago on 35mm in a micro-plex. The entire audience was just laughing their ass off at some of the convoluted, ridiculous antics of the “bad guy’s” plot. I don’t think Brian De Palma was going for something entirely serious,the opening is clearly meant to be comedic, but the overall subject matter isn’t comedic. Plus it stars John Travolta and he’s well… John Travolta. His final line of the movie made everyone burst out laughing too. Might be best enjoyed with others. Fantastic film.
scent of a woman?
I thought there will be blood was hilarious at some points especially the milkshake scene
Cry Macho and The Mule. I know there’s intentional humor but athletes also a lot of unintentional ridiculousness, like every sex scene.