Are New Comedies
Actually Funny?

Every few months someone says "put something funny on."

Someone suggests a new comedy. Someone else says "they don't make them like they used to." Nobody wins that argument. You end up rewatching Airplane! for the fourteenth time.

So are new comedies actually less funny, or are we just older?

What Old School Comedy Did Differently

Old school studio comedy had one goal: make the audience laugh. Subtext was optional.

Blazing Saddles (1974) threw jokes at the audience nonstop and didn't care who it offended. Airplane! (1980) had so many gags layered on top of each other that you missed three while laughing at one. Monty Python and the Holy Grail (1975) was made for almost nothing by six men who were making themselves laugh first and worrying about the audience second. The makers were confident, and it shows.

The golden era of 80s and 90s studio comedy produced some of the most purely enjoyable films ever made. Ghostbusters (1984). Ferris Bueller's Day Off (1986). When Harry Met Sally (1989). Dumb and Dumber (1994). Most of these films were not trying to say anything. They were trying to be funny, and mostly they were.

Old school comedy also had more room. Mel Brooks has said that Blazing Saddles could never be made today. He is probably right. Whether that is a loss or a fix depends on your view, but looser rules let comedy take bigger risks.

Where Did the Big Comedy Go?

The main cause was economics, not talent.

Mid-budget comedies, the films with a big star and a simple premise that cost tens of millions rather than hundreds, became rare after about 2015. Superhero films earn most of their money overseas. Jokes built on American or British references often do not travel, so studios stopped betting on them.

Laughter spreads through a crowd. A line that gets a small laugh alone can get a big one in a full room. The jokes may be as good as before; the setting changed.

The Case That New Comedies Are Underrated

The counterargument is that the comedy did not disappear. It moved.

Superbad (2007) is as good as anything the 80s produced. Bridesmaids (2011) grossed nearly $290 million worldwide on a budget of about $32 million. What We Do in the Shadows (2014) is one of the cleverest comedies of any era. Game Night (2018) is sharper and more inventive than most people give it credit for. Barbie (2023) made nearly $1.5 billion and was funny from start to finish, which the industry had stopped expecting.

The best recent comedies trust the audience to keep up. 21 Jump Street (2012) knows you know it's a stupid concept, and it makes that stupidity the whole joke. The Nice Guys (2016) gives Russell Crowe and Ryan Gosling chemistry that belongs in a classic screwball. Knives Out plays better on a second viewing, because you notice the jokes you missed while following the plot.

So — Funnier or Not?

Airplane! was seen by almost everyone. A good comedy today can be missed by the people most likely to love it. What has been lost is the shared experience of a full cinema laughing at the same joke at the same moment. The jokes did not get worse. The setting changed.

The comedies are still there. They're just harder to find.

Keep Exploring

Why Comedy Stars Disappeared From Cinema

Comedians became movie stars mainly between 1980 and 2005. It worked because stars like Eddie Murphy, Adam Sandler, Jim Carrey, and Will Smith had broad enough appeal to guarantee an opening weekend. Studios would greenlight films on the strength of a single actor attached to a simple premise — no franchise required.

That model collapsed for two reasons. First, streaming fragmented the audience. Netflix, Amazon, and then every other service created infinite alternatives to going to the cinema — and comedies, which rarely rely on spectacle, suffered most. Why pay for a cinema ticket to see a comedy when you can watch it on your sofa in two weeks?

Second, and relatedly, comedy became the dominant mode of television. Succession, Schitt's Creek, What We Do in the Shadows (the TV version), Abbott Elementary — these are producing comedy writing at a level that matches the best theatrical comedies of the 80s and 90s. Many of the writers moved to television.

In practice, the film comedy is now a niche product. It still exists and it's still often excellent — but it doesn't have the cultural gravity it once did. Barbie (2023) was an exception that proved the rule: it took an IP so enormous it could command a cinema audience, and it used that stage to make something genuinely, persistently funny. A famous brand is the thing that gets people into cinemas now.

The Best New Comedies You Might Have Missed

People who say comedy is dead have often stopped looking. The films exist, but they get less marketing than action or prestige drama. Here are the ones most worth tracking down:

Add Superbad (2007), Bridesmaids (2011), 21 Jump Street (2012), The Big Sick (2017), and Bottoms (2023) to the list and you have a decade of comedy that stands up against most of what came before. There are plenty of good ones. They are just harder to find.

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