Late in July, Liam Neeson sat down in a dark room to speak about an important cause. “Right now, there’s a comedy movie that needs you,” he said solemnly. Over clips from “Norbit,” “Tommy Boy” and “Nacho Libre,” he lamented all the comedies that go unmade, unseen or unquoted. “So please,” he exhorted, “buy a ticket, right now — so our children, and hopefully their children too, can one day enjoy watching a comedy in a theater.”
This video about the decline of in-theater comedies was made to promote Neeson’s own: a remake of the absurdist cop spoof “The Naked Gun.” When the original was released, in 1988, mainstream studios still made funny movies, and mainstream audiences still went to see them: Eight of the year’s 10 highest-grossing films were comedies, like “Coming to America” and “Big.” By 2018, you could find maybe nine “comedies” in the year’s Top 30, and nearly every last one was a superhero movie, an animated film, a sequel or all three.
Comedy migrated instead to the internet and streaming. Box-office draws like Adam Sandler signed huge contracts with Netflix. Buzzy comedians started programming their own specials, trading larger budgets and audiences for creative control. Romantic comedies turned toward the Hallmark model: churned out regularly, starring TV actors and influencers, with all the visual dynamism of a yogurt commercial.
All of this has transformed the comedy film from a collaborative experience — an audience gathered and laughing together — into a more passive one, something that plays in the background as you fiddle with your phone. You can see this in the films themselves. Their language has become more like a sitcom, full of easily legible frames and verbal gags that do not require the audience to look up. They’re simpler, more lightweight and more disposable.
Hence Neeson’s comic gravitas in that “Naked Gun” promo. His plea to the viewer is presented like a particularly desperate public service announcement. The joke is that in 2025, paying to see a pure comedy in a theater could almost be considered a charitable act, like donating to UNICEF or volunteering at the A.S.P.C.A.
This year, I heeded Neeson’s advice: I watched a lot of comedies in theaters. I saw them in opening-night New York crowds, in suburban multiplexes and in half-empty theaters, months into their runs. At each film, I found myself looking around at other people, listening to their laughter and realizing just how different the experience would have been if I were watching at home.
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The post The Case for Laughing With Strangers in the Dark appeared first on New York Times.
