At the just-wrapped Sundance Film Festival, buyers were tripping over their mukluks trying to find the next Little Miss Sunshine.
Amid a sea of dreary at last year's festival, that film stood out -- it was enjoyable, easy to market, something audiences would actually want to see rather than feel they ought to, like too many of this year's high-profile films. Made for a pittance, it was picked up for $10.5-million (U.S.), went on to gross $60-million domestic and another $30-million international, and is huge on DVD.
This past week, it won top honours from both the Producers Guild of America and the Screen Actors Guild, giving it an actual shot at its four Oscar nominations -- including best picture, where it's the only comedy for miles.
Why such a big response to a shaggy-dog indie? Because Little Miss Sunshine is the kind of film Hollywood is sorely lacking:
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a comedy that is funny yet classy. Its laughs come from pratfalls and sight gags, yes, but also through character development and cleverness.
It's humane rather than cruel, and it lifts your spirits without insulting your intelligence. It's a rare hybrid, winning both cash and prizes.
Hollywood used to make them on a regular basis -- in the 1940s, when Katharine Hepburn was in her fast-talking heyday. In 1973, when American Graffiti lost the best-picture Oscar to The Sting; and in 1977, when Annie Hall swept all the major Oscars except best actor -- which went to Richard Dreyfuss for another comedy, The Goodbye Girl.
In the eighties, comedies were nominated for best picture almost every year: Tootsie, The Big Chill, Prizzi's Honor, Hannah and Her Sisters, A Room with a View, Broadcast News, Hope and Glory, Moonstruck, Working Girl, Driving Miss Daisy. Tootsie (nominated for 10 Oscars) and Driving Miss Daisy (nine nominations and four wins, including best picture) earned more nods than this year's most-honoured film, Dreamgirls (eight).
And in the nineties, best-picture nominees included Four Weddings and a Funeral, Babe, Sense and Sensibility (seven nominations), Fargo (also seven), Jerry Maguire, As Good as It Gets (seven again) and The Full Monty -- culminating with Shakespeare in Love (1998), which was nominated for a whopping 13 awards and won, yes, seven, including best picture. But this decade, comedies fell off the awards grid. Gosford Park was nominated for best picture in 2001, Sideways in 2004. That's about it.
Some time around 2001, when eight of the 12 top-grossing films came directly from the tiny wallets of children, Hollywood changed its comedy business model, and began to sell funny exclusively to kids and young males. Films like Broadcast News and Working Girl, set in offices and starring A-list adults, yielded to Shrek, Nemo, The Incredibles and the comedy cabal run by Ben Stiller, Will Ferrell, Jim Carrey and Vince Vaughn. Those guys go for a rude, crude subset of funny where no fart is left unsmelled; comedy that favours stupidity over intelligence and humiliation over compassion.
They had a good year in 2006. Night at the Museum, starring Ben Stiller, was the fifth-highest-grossing film, $364-million and still counting. Sacha Baron Cohen's Borat took in $245-million; Adam Sandler's Click, $232-million; Ferrell's Talledega Nights, $163-million. Vaughn's The Break-Up made $203.5-million; Owen Wilson's You, Me and Dupree, $130.5-million; Jack Black's Nacho Libre, $99-million; and Johnny Knoxville's Jackass: Number Two, $84.5-million. Then there was Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest, the highest grosser of the year, which earned over $1-billion worldwide. With a number like that, who needs Oscar?
I'm sure this was only confirmed by last weekend's box office, when Epic Movie, a slapdash satire, grossed more than any of the Oscar films hoping for a bump from their nominations. (The sole A-list comedy that even resembles those of old, The Devil Wears Prada, is already on DVD.) But who decided that only kids want to laugh? Who decided that a line like "I smell poo" now qualifies as wit? And who, God help us all, decided that for an adult to be funny, she must act like she's off her medication?
I'm referring to the bafflingly awful new Diane Keaton movie, Because I Said So, in which Keaton, whom I used to adore, is out-of-control shrieky, so ditzy that she can't dial a phone -- and so bereft of any ideas that she actually steals Annette Bening's legs-in-the-air sex bit from American Beauty, where it was used to much darker and better effect.
I'd love to know what occurred on set between Keaton and director Michael Lehmann. Did he think she was funny (impossible), or was he helpless to rein her in? (He made Heathers, but he also made Hudson Hawk.) So hysterical were Keaton's mannerisms that after a few minutes I began to worry about her off-screen sanity. The critic a few seats down from me audibly moaned in pain from start to finish. He was moaning for all of us.
Little Miss Sunshine's success reminds us that great comedies involve using our brains sometimes, not checking them at the ticket window. I'm just glad Katharine Hepburn never resorted to splaying her legs and making monkey-orgasm squeals to get a laugh.
