OneDream_89 wrote:EminemBase wrote:Yeah they are. Because they're all copying Superbad.
That 'kind' of comedy isn't totally groundbreaking, I mean you can even go back to say American Pie which is similar in tone.
But Superbad was something special and things like The Hangover are knock-offs.
The Hangover was definitely over-hyped. Superbad deserves all the praise it got and gets.
LOL... no. I usually agree with you EmBase and i like reading your posts cause you're a very racional person, but on a subject as subjective as humor, you cant make that kind of statments. To me
The Hangover is 100x better than
Superbad.
Well firstly, yes I can make that statement.
Saying something is subjective is always a cop-out. Almost everything is subjective, on the SURFACE. Things appear subjective but everything has a rational or logical root. We just can't always directly access it, or need to dig deeper to find it. To find the logic in something.
Now, you said you
prefer The Hangover - I cannot tell you that you don't
prefer it. THAT is the only thing I cannot do. Because that's taste. And taste is by definition personal and you can't tell me what I like or don't like and visa versa.
BUT, me saying a comedy isn't as
good as another comedy is not
that and I can justify the statement. There is logic to comedy and just like you can debate and justify why some rap is better than other rap, why one painting is better, or more valid etc. than another, you can do the same with comedy. Or
any form of art. Period.
There are objective reasoning points and / or innate sensibilities beneath all the layers of supposed 'random' taste palettes that lead us to our personal conclusions. And people of certain intelligence brackets usually share similar innate taste tendencies, due to how they think. That's why it's almost universally agreed that
The Godfather is one of the greatest movies of all-time. Do you think that's a coincidence? of course not.
There's clearly
objective reasoning to aesthetics, and story and character that most of us agree are 'good' or 'bad' or we wouldn't have such landslide, universally agreed opinions on things. And we wouldn't have a movie industry that is able to replicate success after success on past formula and apply a base logic to film structure, to achieve certain results.
And it's absolutely no different with comedy. I can justify why
Superbad is a better comedy just like you could justify why a certain character is more complex, or why a certain drama scene is more realistic. There's logic to irony, there's a reason we laugh at certain things. It's not random and it's not personal. The only thing personal about it is
what you laugh at, but you can't choose your sense of humour and you can't choose to find something funny or not.
So the only thing I cannot do, is tell you which one you prefer. That's absolutely true. But that's not what I did. I said
The Hangover is over-hyped and
Superbad deserves all the praise it gets. And I can absolutely justify that, if you would like to go into detail, we can certainly do so.
Because that cop-out you used suggests that... no comedy can ever be better or worse than other comedy. Critically speaking. And that's simply not true. Are you saying that if I made a 'comedy film' where I recorded myself talking babble and throwing shit against a wall, that you couldn't tell me it's a worse comedy than say
The Office? or
Curb Your Enthusiasm?
Don't be ridiculous. That's absolute madness. Never fall back on 'it's subjective' and 'therefore, everything is equal by definition'. That's so perversely illogical and untrue. You also seemed to have missed the irony in your own post unless it was intentional, as you condemn me for saying one comedy is better than the other and then conclude by saying... one is better than the other...

and yes, I noticed you said TO ME. That means nothing, you don't have to say 'to me' or 'in my opinion' every time you say something. A point is a point, and when it's about art, opinion is implied.
There's higher and lower taste in everything. Take food for example - you could go to a classy restraunt and hate the taste of the food. And nobody could tell you that you don't hate it, and that you don't prefer McDonalds. But does that mean that McDonalds is BETTER food? just because you prefer it? does it mean that junk food is
better than fine cuisine... of course not. It's just that you don't have the taste palette that prefers fine cuisine, but objectively, the cuisine IS finer / better. It's a more refined taste, it's richer, it has more flavour etc. etc. And the same can be argued for practically anything. Just like it can for comedy. As I could lay out to you specifically why the comedy in
Superbad is better. Why the dialogue is 'technically' better comedy. Richer comedy, why the humour resonates on a more intelligent level, why the characters are more fully realized. And so on.