Action comedy (often listed with a hyphen as action-comedy ) is a genre that combines aspects of action and comedy .
17-495: Every Home Should Have One (U.S. title: Think Dirty ) is a 1970 British comedy film directed by Jim Clark and starring Marty Feldman . The screenplay was by Marty Feldman, Barry Took and Denis Norden , based on a story by Herbert Kretzmer and Milton Shulman . The film ridicules the then ongoing campaign organised by Mary Whitehouse against gratuitous sex in British entertainment and advertising. An advertising man
34-452: A film's atmosphere, character, and story, and therefore, the labels "drama" and "comedy" are too broad to be considered a genre. Instead, his taxonomy argues that comedy is a type of film that contains at least a dozen different sub-types. A number of hybrid genres have emerged, such as action comedy and romantic comedy . The first comedy film was L'Arroseur Arrosé (1895), directed and produced by film pioneer Louis Lumière . Less than
51-455: A mad advertising executive who devises a series of steamy commercials for a brand of frozen porridge." Leslie Halliwell said: "Tiresomely frenetic star comedy with the emphasis on smut. " Comedy film The comedy film is a film genre that emphasizes humor . These films are designed to amuse audiences and make them laugh. Films in this genre typically have a happy ending , with dark comedy being an exception to this rule. Comedy
68-483: A mainstream audience. The success of the American television show Saturday Night Live drove decades of cinema with racier content allowed on television drawing on the program's stars and characters, with bigger successes including Wayne's World , Mean Girls , Ghostbusters and Animal House . Parody and joke-based films continue to find audiences. While comedic films are among the most popular with audiences at
85-509: A minute long, it shows a boy playing a prank on a gardener. The most notable comedy actors of the silent film era (1895–1927) were Charlie Chaplin , Harold Lloyd , and Buster Keaton , though they were able to make the transition into “ talkies ” after the 1920s. Film-makers in the 1960s skillfully employed the use of comedy film to make social statements by building their narratives around sensitive cultural, political or social issues. Such films include Dr Strangelove, or How I Learned to Love
102-503: A separate genre, but rather, provides a better understanding of the film. Action comedy AllMovie describes action comedy films as those with "fast and furious" action yet being "mostly lighthearted", rarely having death or serious injury. The Script Lab wrote, "[The genre] relies on the characters to bring out the humor, while the action scenes tend to be less intense than in the traditional action movie." Action comedies often have " fish out of water " themes; for example, using
119-477: A starring actor's celebrity to contrast the setting, such as how comedian and actor Eddie Murphy 's "streetwise, sarcastic persona clashes with conventional police procedures in the Beverly Hills Cop films" in the late twentieth century. The 1926 film The General starring Buster Keaton may be the first action comedy film. Other early forms of action comedy films were swashbuckler films from
136-405: Is assigned by his boss to come up with a sexy new image for Mrs McLaughlin's Frozen Porridge. While his wife runs a clean-up-TV campaign organized by the local vicar, he has an affair with the au-pair girl. The overall concept is that adverts play out before their lives connecting to the products to hand. The various porridge advertising campaigns get more and more extreme: the most relevant being
153-480: Is one of the oldest genres in film, and it is derived from classical comedy in theatre . Some of the earliest silent films were slapstick comedies , which often relied on visual depictions, such as sight gags and pratfalls, so they could be enjoyed without requiring sound. To provide drama and excitement to silent movies, live music was played in sync with the action on the screen, on pianos, organs, and other instruments. When sound films became more prevalent during
170-637: The Goldilocks and the Three Bears campaign. This leads to a secondary campaign to search for "Miss Goldilocks". The film's titles and animated sequences were provided by Richard Williams . The film was produced at Shepperton Studios in England . The film theme song, "Every Home Should Have One", was written by John Cameron , Caryl Brahms , and Ned Sherrin , arranged by Alan Tew , produced by Jackie Rand, and sung by Millicent Martin . The song
187-440: The 1920s, comedy films grew in popularity, as laughter could result from both burlesque situations but also from humorous dialogue . Comedy, compared with other film genres , places more focus on individual star actors, with many former stand-up comics transitioning to the film industry due to their popularity. In The Screenwriters Taxonomy (2017), Eric R. Williams contends that film genres are fundamentally based upon
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#1732798152225204-499: The 1930s. Allmovie wrote that its "stars combined wit and one-liners with a thrilling plot and daring stunts". In the 1980s, the genre became commonplace, and buddy cop films emerged as an extension of action comedy films such as Midnight Run (1988) and the Lethal Weapon film series . Other action comedies from the decade included The Blues Brothers (1980) and the films of actor and martial artist Jackie Chan . In
221-523: The 1990s, action comedy films "became more violent, with fiery deaths and emphatic shootings increasingly used as punchlines". Rotten Tomatoes wrote that Rush Hour (1998) revitalized the genre's formula and that Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels (1998) was a highlight from the decade. In the first two decades of the 21st century, the films Kung Fu Hustle (2004), Hot Fuzz (2007), Tropic Thunder (2008), 21 Jump Street (2012), and Bad Boys for Life (2020) were among numerous instances of
238-593: The Bomb , Guess Who's Coming to Dinner? and The Graduate . In America, the sexual revolution drove an appetite for comedies that celebrated and parodied changing social morals, including Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice and Fanny Hill . In Britain, a camp sensibility lay behind the successful Carry On films , while in America subversive independent film-maker John Waters made camp films for college audiences with his drag queen friends that eventually found
255-719: The box office, there is an 'historical bias against a close and serious consideration of comedy' when it comes to critical reception and conferring of awards, such as at the Academy Awards . Film writer Cailian Savage observes "Comedies have won Oscars, although they’ve usually been comedy-dramas, involved very depressing scenes, or appealed to stone-hearted drama lovers in some other way, such as Shakespeare in Love ." According to Williams' taxonomy , all film descriptions should contain their type (comedy or drama) combined with one (or more) sub-genres. This combination does not create
272-402: The same time. Most of the cast ... are encouraged to punch away at everything in sight, which results in a good deal of unfunny mugging." The Radio Times Guide to Films gave the film 1/5 stars, writing: "This dismal comedy ... boasts a top-notch comic cast. But their efforts are totally overshadowed by a shambolic, leering performance from Feldman, making his second screen appearance, as
289-430: Was released as a single to promote the film. The film was one of the most popular movies in 1970 at the British box office. However according to Sidney Gilliat who was on the board at British Lion, the film lost money. The Monthly Film Bulletin wrote: "This feature debut by Jim Clark ... is a strictly hit-and-miss affair which reveals, once again, the dangers of trying to be fashionably contemporary and satirical at
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