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Movies => Good Movies => Topic started by: Svengoolie 3 on January 26, 2018, 06:54:55 PM



Title: High brow and low brow comedy.
Post by: Svengoolie 3 on January 26, 2018, 06:54:55 PM
Can you list some lowbrow and highbrow comedies you like?

Lowbrow: Blazing saddles.  (Yeah,  campfire scene)  Animal house.

Highbrow: Love and Death.  Dr.  Strangelove.

I think highbrow comedy is harder.  Lowbrow comedy just needs some farts,  belches and vulgartity plus a knee in the groin now and then.

Highbrpw takes a lot more.  



Title: Re: High brow and low brow comedy.
Post by: ER on January 26, 2018, 07:10:16 PM
My cousin liked to say a guideline was Jewish comedy was lowbrow and English was highbrow but I can think of exceptions to each. Benny Hill versus some Woody Allen comes to mind.


Title: Re: High brow and low brow comedy.
Post by: Svengoolie 3 on January 26, 2018, 08:23:15 PM
Yeah, Woody Allen is one of the great comedy film makers who never sunk to toilet humor.  His comedy was aimed well above most audiences today and he wasn't afraid to be open about it. he doesn't write for the masses.



Title: Re: High brow and low brow comedy.
Post by: RCMerchant on January 26, 2018, 08:41:53 PM
I can't STAND Woody Allen movies. Just-ugh. Now DR. STRANGELOVE is fantastic!

Personally,I much prefer low-brow. I'll take the 3 Stooges over a bunch of metrosexuals whining about their relationship quirks any day.

http://youtu.be/Mw0riLqQBj0 (http://youtu.be/Mw0riLqQBj0)


Title: Re: High brow and low brow comedy.
Post by: Archivist on January 26, 2018, 08:44:57 PM
From the same awesome YouTube channel, BriTANick.

Low Brow comedy:

! No longer available (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T0Wc8RQNtWU#)

High Brow comedy (with a little bit of low brow)

! No longer available (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mephJf3-zYE#)


Title: Re: High brow and low brow comedy.
Post by: The Burgomaster on January 27, 2018, 03:43:07 PM
Highbrow:

* THE KING OF COMEDY

* LOST IN AMERICA

* TEACHER'S PET (1958)

* ONE, TWO, THREE

* MR. BLANDINGS BUILDS HIS DREAM HOUSE

Lowbrow:

* KING FRAT

* DUMB AND DUMBER

* NATIONAL LAMPOON'S VAN WILDER

* HAROLD AND KUMAR GO TO WHITE CASTLE

* THE GROOVE TUBE

* KENTUCKY FRIED MOVIE

* TEAM AMERICA: WORLD POLICE

* A MILLION WAYS TO DIE IN THE WEST




Title: Re: High brow and low brow comedy.
Post by: RCMerchant on January 27, 2018, 04:08:20 PM
I don't like ALL low comedy. It has to be done right. Most frat house junk and NATIONAL LAMPOON movies leave me cold.
But DUMB AND DUMBER and AIRPLANE kill me!

Question for Burgomaster-Would you consider the Marx Brothers to be low or high? Because you have to be sharp to catch some of Groucho's humor.


Title: Re: High brow and low brow comedy.
Post by: The Burgomaster on January 28, 2018, 01:22:30 PM
Question for Burgomaster-Would you consider the Marx Brothers to be low or high? Because you have to be sharp to catch some of Groucho's humor.

I'd put Marx Brothers movies on the "high brow" side. I think their funniest moments are when they are engaged in snappy dialogue. And I agree that you need to listen carefully to catch some of Groucho's jokes.


Title: Re: High brow and low brow comedy.
Post by: Archivist on January 28, 2018, 08:54:42 PM
Groucho Marx was my role model for snappy banter for years. Imprinted me deeply as a kid.  Nothing like a fast-talking sarcastic Yid, and I mean that in an absolutely positive way.  Haven't watched a Marx Brothers film for ages, must get back into it.


Title: Re: High brow and low brow comedy.
Post by: The Burgomaster on January 29, 2018, 04:53:29 PM
Groucho Marx was my role model for snappy banter for years. Imprinted me deeply as a kid.  Nothing like a fast-talking sarcastic Yid, and I mean that in an absolutely positive way.  Haven't watched a Marx Brothers film for ages, must get back into it.

One of my favorite Groucho lines is from DUCK SOUP. He's talking to chubby Margaret Dumont about marriage and he says: "I can see you right now in the kitchen, bending over a hot stove. But I can't see the stove."

Another favorite is from THE COCOANUTS: "Three years ago I came to Florida without a nickel in my pocket. Now I’ve got a nickel in my pocket."





Title: Re: High brow and low brow comedy.
Post by: BoyScoutKevin on January 29, 2018, 05:14:54 PM
How lowbrow can I go?

Abbott and Costello
I think I've seen every one of their films.

The 3 Stooges
Again, I think I have seen every one of their films, and unlike most people, who found them thru their short subjects, I 1st came to know them thru their feature films.

As for highbrow

I think the nearest I have ever came to highbrow comedy is thru 2 films I inadvertently caught on television: the American "Start the Revolution Without Me" and the British "Big Time Operators," which I saw under its original title "The Smallest Show on Earth." So . . .

The Smallest Show on Earth
The acting duo of Bill Travers and Virginia McKenna inherit a cinema called "The Fleapit" from a deceased relative, where patrons pay for their admission with live chickens. The comedy is provided by Margaret Rutherford, Peter Sellers, and Bernard Miles, but it is the films that make the film as it were. Films they somehow manage to run in slo-mo, speeded up, backwards, upside down, and ever which way but the right way. They do manage to do a couple of things right. They put extra salt on the popcorn and then show films about people dying of thirst in the desert, so their patrons will buy something to drink,  and as the cinema is next to the train station, they run a film about trains, and when the film's train pulls into the station, a real train pulls into the station next door.

Start the Revolution Without Me
Loosely based, very loosely, on Dumas The Corsican Brothers, and set at the start of the French Revolution, Gene Wilder and Donald Sutherland star as two sets of twins, who were mixed up at birth. One set of twins from the upper classes and one set from the lower classes, and all the confusion that results when both sets of twins run into each other.

Even after all this time . . .
2 of the most memorable,
2 of the most humorous,
2 of my favorite comedies
. . . of all time.


Title: Re: High brow and low brow comedy.
Post by: Pacman000 on February 01, 2018, 10:43:37 AM
Keep in mind even "low brow" comedy takes finess.  Simply hitting someone or making fart noises isn't funny; it needs to be times well and  put into the correct context, or it seems cruel/crude.

The Smallest Show on Earth is funny; wish it was better known.


Title: Re: High brow and low brow comedy.
Post by: Archivist on February 02, 2018, 12:32:22 AM
Highbrow:

! No longer available (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J691coIfFvs#)

and lowbrow, from the same awesome duo, Fry and Laurie:

! No longer available (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U8ko2nCk_hE#)


Title: Re: High brow and low brow comedy.
Post by: Fox Sake on February 11, 2018, 01:29:03 PM
Anything from Simon Pegg really. I love the way he plays off long-time pal Nick Frost, not only in Hot Fuzz, Paul and Shaun of the Dead, but also the TV comedy "Spaced".

I quite like Airplane type humour too - "just don't call me Shirley"

On  higher plain, I would say Woody Allen gets my vote, especially his earlier less serious films - Love and Death and Annie Hall in particular


Title: Re: High brow and low brow comedy.
Post by: 316zombie on February 11, 2018, 04:20:44 PM
welcome to the loony bin,fox!
   have you see " midsummer night's sex comedy","manhattan murder mystery" and "shadows and fog" ? those are my top 3 for woody allen, i've watched  them at least 20 times.


Title: Re: High brow and low brow comedy.
Post by: RCMerchant on February 11, 2018, 09:13:20 PM
the OUT -OF- TOWNERS (1970) is good!

 I seen it several times- the movie with Jack Lemon and Sandy Dennis and their on a business trip to NYC.
That was kinda a mix between high and low. It's hilarious!


Title: Re: High brow and low brow comedy.
Post by: Fox Sake on February 12, 2018, 02:57:05 AM
welcome to the loony bin,fox!
   have you see " midsummer night's sex comedy","manhattan murder mystery" and "shadows and fog" ? those are my top 3 for woody allen, i've watched  them at least 20 times.

I have seen all three, and they're all good in their own right, but don't quite have that polish as say Annie Hall or Sleeper for example. That said "Manhatten Murder Mystery" was great fun


Title: Re: High brow and low brow comedy.
Post by: 316zombie on February 14, 2018, 12:35:56 AM
valid point, and i think that's part of the reason i like them so much. mind you, i love annie hall,and hannah and her sisters, and stardust memories,etc... but they ARE polished. sometimes that just ..bugs me.


Title: Re: High brow and low brow comedy.
Post by: Fox Sake on February 14, 2018, 01:46:00 AM
Well I might just give "Midsummer Night's Sex Comedy", "Shadows and Fog" , "Hannah and her Sisters", "Stardust Memories" etc. another try soon. Critics seem to think that his Millennial output has been pretty average, and that some of his more serious films are far too anal, self-indulgent and not very accessible.

But there are some - like Annie Hall, Manhatten and Crimes & Misdemeanours - that have that cross-over appeal: light comedy with some mild drama mixed in, and those are the films I enjoy most.