Comedy is a genre that aims to elicit laughter through entertaining stories and characters, though some comedies address serious topics. The genre has evolved over time, from slapstick silent films to verbal humor films to modern hybrid genres that blend comedy with action, horror, or drama. Successful comedies rely on humor, strong casting, reputable production studios, and wide distribution to become popular at the box office.

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Genre Analysis-Comedy
Comedy is a genre of film that uses humour as a driving force. The aim of a comedy film is
to illicit laughter from the audience through entertaining stories and characters. Although the
comedy film may take on some serious material, most have a happy ending. Comedy film has
the tendency to become a hybrid sub-genre because humour can be incorporated into many
other genres. Comedies are more likely than other films to fall back on the success and
popularity of an individual star.
Types of Comedy:
Action Comedy- relies on the characters to bring humour, with action scenes being less
intense than traditional action movies
Black-Comedy- a sub-genre of comedy and satire. It takes topics and situations that are
commonly held as serious and explores them in a comical way. It should make the audience
laugh but also feel uncomfortable
Horror-Comedy- aims to scare the audience but also provide comical outlets that let the
audience laugh at their fear
Dramedy- has a dramatic tone, yet has important elements of comedy. A balance is needed
and provides comedic relief for the audience, while still addressing serious issues
Parody/Spoof- these films ridicule serious situations at people. These films rely heavily on
satire and can be used as a social or political commentary, or can be made in the form of a
fake documentary known as a “Mockumentary”
History of Comedy:
Shakespearean and Elizabethan Comedy
A Shakespearean comedy is one that has a happy ending
and so is different from modern comedy. They usually
involved marriages between unmarried characters, and a
tone and style that is more light-hearted than
Shakespeare's other plays such as Hamlet or Romeo and
Juliet that end with tragedy
19th to Early 20th Century
In early 19th century England, pantomime acquired its present form which includes slapstick
comedy and featured the first mainstream clown Joseph Grimaldi. Comedy routines also
featured heavily in British music hall theatres which became popular in the 1850s. British
comedians who performed in these music theatres include Charlie Chaplin, Stan
Laurel and Dan Leno. In the 1890’s a comedian called Fred Karno developed a form of
sketch comedy without dialogue and Chaplin and Laurel worked for him.

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American vaudeville (a type of comedy featuring a mixture of speciality acts such as
burlesque comedy and song and dance) also emerged in the 1880s and remained popular until
the 1930s, and featured comedians such as W. C. Fields, Buster Keaton and the Marx
Brothers.
In Film
In film Comedy dates back to the era of silent film. Silent film
comedy relied heavily on slapstick and burlesque humour.
Slapstick includes very energetic comical conventions such as
chases, collisions and practical jokes with the master of
slapstick comedy being Charlie Chaplin with his first film
being “Making a Living” in 1914. Around 1929 the silent era
was quickly dying out of fashion and with the addition of
dialogue came verbal humour which consisted of onscreen puns,
innuendos, parodies etc. One of the first actors to use verbal
humour to its full advantage was W.C. Fields who was in films
such as “My Little Chickadee” (1940). Comedy since then has
developed massively and now fits in with many other genres.
This includes social commentary and spoofs with some of the
most popular of all time being created by the Monty Python
team and their well-coordinated comedy films. More recently
popular comedy films have consisted of action-comedies such
“The Hateful Eight”, "Pirates of the Caribbean” and “Guardians
of the Galaxy”. While these films may focus on the action side
of things comedy is carefully implemented into each of them to
keep the film engaging and prevent it from becoming too serious. Popular comedy films have
also heavily consisted of animations created by giants such as Disney, Pixar and
DreamWorks. Popular titles created by these companies include “Shrek” “Toy Story” and
more recently “Inside Out”. These films are targeted at
children however they include content that is also
appealing to adults. One huge reason films produced by
companies such as Disney is due to their extremely high
reputation of producing high quality children’s films such
as “Inside Out” or “Frozen” that appeal to all
demographics (mainly children) and convey comedy in a
family friendly way.

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Top Grossing Comedy Films
 “Despicable Me” (2010) this animation was produced by
Universal Pictures and Illumination entertainment and has
grossed $251,501,645. This is due to how critically
acclaimed the film was and how the distributor of the film
(Universal Pictures) is a huge company that had no trouble
being able to distribute the film and was so successful that
a sequel was created and the ‘spin-off’ “Minions” was
created. A lot of merchandise has also been produced
around the film and was overall a huge success
 “The Hangover” (2009) was also very successful and
grossed $277,313,371. While this film was rated 15 in the
UK it still did very well. This is for several reasons: the
film itself is quite funny, it had a good story, had a great
cast of actors with Zach Galifianakis becoming a fan
favourite with his portrayal of Alan and also had little
competition when releasing in June of 2009. The film was
produced and distributed by Warner Bros. The film was so
well received that two sequels were also created however
did not see the same amount of success
 “Inside Out” (2015), a much more recent film and also the
highest grossing comedy this year with a gross of
$356,454,367. The film was produced by Walt Disney
Pictures and Pixar Animation Studios who have such a
high reputation for children’s comedies from their
previous work such as the “Toy Story” franchise that
meant it was a given that this film would do well at the
box office. However the film was also received very well
by critics and had a good cast of actors that included actors
such as Amy Poehler who voiced “Joy” and is well
known in the world comedy for things such as “Parks and
Recreations”
Key Directors today include:
 Beth McCarthy-Miller (Saturday Night live, Brooklyn Nine-Nine, Parks and
Recreations)
 Edgar Wright (Shaun of The dead, Hot Fuzz, The World’s End)
 Greg Mottola (Superbad, Adventureland, Paul)
 Ben Stiller (Zoolander, Tropic Thunder, The Cable Guy)