Comedies absurd (adjective): ridiculous, totally unreasonable or impossible - The idea that dogs can read our minds is absurd, Josie. banter (noun): witty conversation - Can you understand the banter between drinkers at the pub yet? black comedy (noun): comedy about topics like death, war, illness, etc. - My friends hate black comedies, but I love them. comedy (noun): a novel, TV show or movie that's meant to make us laugh - We could do with a laugh, so let's watch a comedy. comical (adjective): strange or silly enough to be funny - It's full of funny characters in comical farce (noun): a comedy of silly or unlikely events - It's an old-fashioned farce about a wedding that goes wrong. faux pas (also "gaffe") (noun): something embarrassing that's said or done in a social situation His worst faux pas was telling the queen a dirty joke. /ˌfəʊ ˈpɑː/ gag (noun): a witty joke - Thinking up gags for a movie script isn't easy, you know. goofball comedy (noun): a comedy with a very stupid but funny main character - It's a goofball comedy, so it's OK to laugh. gross-out (adjective): disgusting enough to make you feel sick - It's a gross-out movie, so your teenage sons will love it. inept (adjective): lacking ability, skill or training - Playing with an inept golfer can be very funny, but you mustn't laugh. make fun of (verb): to tease, mock or make unkind jokes about someone - Why does your brother always make fun of gay people? mockumentary (noun): a comedy that looks like a serious documentary - We just saw this really funny arts mockumentary. Документальный фильм-пародия romantic comedy (also "rom com") (noun): a funny love story - My wife loves romantic comedies, but I can't stand them! satire (noun): a book, play, movie, etc that uses comedy to criticize something - A good satire can change the way you think. satirize (verb): to use humour to poke fun at something or someone - I like the way it satirizes lawyers and the legal system. screwball comedy (noun): a farcical romantic comedy of the 30s or 40s - I've only seen Cary Grant in screwball comedies. Комедия чудаков slapstick (noun): comedy based on sight gags - Those Mr Bean movies are full of slapstick comedy. фарс spoof (noun): a funny parody of a movie genre - Is it a horror movie spoof, or just a funny horror movie? пародия Western (noun): a cowboy movie about the old American West - There were lots of Westerns on TV when I was a kid. Since the early days of cinema, comedy has been one of its most popular and successful genres. A good comedy has lots of scenes with funny characters or funny situations that make us laugh. Characters can be funny if they're clever and say or do witty things, or if they're socially inept and say or do embarrassing things, or if they're not very clever and they say and do stupid things. Scenes can be funny if something unexpected or shocking happens or if something embarrassing or ridiculous happens. After it became possible to use sound in films in the early 1930s, American screwball comedies became very popular. These films were often about smart women getting what they wanted at a time when men had the power to control nearly every aspect of a woman's life. In screwball comedies this "battle of the sexes" was part of a farce full of gags. A farce is a comedy about a ridiculous or improbable situation, and slapstick farces like the Marx Brothers' Duck Soup and A Night at the Opera and W.C. Fields' The Bank Dick were as popular as screwball farces in the 30s and 40s. Films that find humour in these and other serious topics like war, illness and death are often called black comedies. Black comedies about death and murder include Man Bites Dog, Heathers and God Bless America, and black comedies about terrorism include Charlie Wilson's War and a 2010 British movie about a group of inept would-be terrorists called Four Lions. Similar movies that aren't quite as "black" as these films are sometimes called dark comedies. These movies are often about less serious personal or social problems, and one of the most famous is a movie that won five Academy Awards in 2000 called American Beauty. "American dream", or the idea of living a perfect life with a perfect family in a perfect American home. Another film that satirizes the American dream is The Truman Show starring Jim Carrey, but not all satires target this topic. In movies like Network, Broadcast News and Anchorman it's television news that's targeted, and in political satires like Being There, Wag The Dog, Bulworth it's politicians who are targeted. While most of the characters in Charlie Kaufman's movies are very smart, a style of comedy that features very stupid characters is called goofball comedy. When watching a goofball comedy, we can't help laughing at the stupid things the characters say and do and cringing at all their social faux pas. Many moviegoers love goofball comedies like The Jerk starring Steve Martin and Dumb and Dumber starring Jim Carrey and Jeff Daniels. In the 1960s underground film-maker John Waters used offensive or bad-taste humour in dark satires of American life such as Pink Flamingos and Female Trouble in which characters like Divine, a very loud, very large woman played by a transvestite actor, did things that were so disgusting that audience members either cringed and laughed or cringed and left. In the 1980s mainstream studio movies called gross-out comedies with the same sort of disgusting scenes, but without the satire, became quite popular. Two of the most successful were 1978's Animal House and 1999's American Pie. Movies that tell funny stories about teenagers and their lives are called teen comedies, and those that show the humour of teen life without making fun of teenagers include the 1988 movie Hairspray https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SUoG7mqCixI directed by John Waters, the 1998 high-school comedy Rushmore directed by Wes Anderson, and a very original 2011 Japanese teen comedy directed by Sion Sono called Love Exposure. Many of these movies are about teenage love and romance, but movies about the same topics in relation to adults belong to a different genre called romantic comedy or "rom com". Some of the funniest comedies ever made have been spoofs of documentaries or satires that look like serious documentaries. These films are called mockumentaries and they often include interviews with what seem to be, or sometimes are, real people in the real world. Some of the most popular mockumentaries include This is Spinal Tap which documents the career of a rock group, Waiting for Guffman about an amateur theatre group, and Best in Show which looks at the world of competitive dog shows.
