There's a conversation that happens at every dinner table, every streaming queue, every time someone says "put something funny on."
Someone suggests a new comedy. Someone else says "they just don't make them like they used to." A mild argument follows. Nobody wins. You end up rewatching Airplane! for the fourteenth time.
But is it true? Are new comedy movies actually less funny — or are we just getting older?
What Old School Comedy Did Differently
Old school comedy had one job: make you laugh. That was it. No subtext required.
Blazing Saddles (1974) threw a joke every fifteen seconds 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 confidence was infectious.
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). These films weren't trying to say anything. They were trying to be funny. And they were.
The other thing old school comedy had: freedom. Mel Brooks has said repeatedly that Blazing Saddles could never be made today. He's probably right. Whether that's a loss or a correction depends on who you ask — but the guardrails were lower, which meant comedy could run further out on the ledge.
Where Did the Big Comedy Go?
Here's what actually happened — and it has less to do with talent than economics.
The mid-budget comedy — the $40–80 million studio film with a big star, a simple premise, and no ambitions beyond two hours of laughs — basically stopped being made around 2015. Studios figured out that comedies don't travel well internationally. A superhero film makes its money back worldwide. A comedy built around American or British cultural references makes its money at home and then struggles. When Hollywood went global, the comedy got left behind.
Streaming
Comedies moved to Netflix and streaming — but watching alone at home, half on your phone, isn't the same as laughing in a cinema with 200 strangers.
Superhero Comedy
Marvel folded comedy into action. Thor: Ragnarok is genuinely funny — but it's also mythology maintenance. The laughs have to share the screen.
Prestige Comedy
The Grand Budapest Hotel and Knives Out are witty and beautifully made. But they're comedies the way a soufflé is a snack. Technically true, but not quite the point.
Comedy is a communal experience. Laughing in a cinema is chemically different from chuckling on your sofa. The jokes aren't always worse — the circumstances changed.
The Case That New Comedies Are Underrated
Here's the counterargument: the funny hasn't gone away. It just moved.
Superbad (2007) is as good as anything the 80s produced. Bridesmaids (2011) made people cry laughing in cinemas worldwide. 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 genuinely, repeatedly funny — something that wasn't supposed to be possible anymore.
The new comedies that work tend to trust their audience. 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 is funnier on rewatch than first viewing, because you catch the jokes you missed being surprised by the plot.
So — Funnier or Not?
The ceiling hasn't dropped, but the floor has risen and the volume has shrunk. The very best comedies of the last decade stand up against anything. But there are fewer of them reaching the scale that makes them cultural events — and that scale is what makes a comedy feel timeless.
When Airplane! came out, everyone saw it. When a great comedy comes out now, half the people most likely to love it never hear about it. The experience of watching Dumb and Dumber at 12 in a full cinema, laughing so hard your ribs hurt, surrounded by strangers doing the same — that specific experience is harder to replicate. Not because the jokes got worse, but because the circumstances changed.
The comedies are still there. They're just harder to find.
Which, honestly, is what Movie Roulette was built for.
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