Are New Comedies
Actually Funny?

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.

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?

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.

Keep Exploring

Why Comedy Stars Disappeared From Cinema

The comedian-as-movie-star was a very specific Hollywood construct that peaked 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. The talent went where the audience was.

What this means in practice: the film comedy is now a niche product rather than a mainstream one. 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. That's the formula that works now.

The Best New Comedies You Might Have Missed

The argument that comedy is dead usually comes from people who stopped looking. The films are there. They just don't get the same promotional muscle that action or prestige drama receives. 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. The barrel isn't empty. The light is just pointed elsewhere.

Frequently Asked Questions