Funny Films and Dumb Movies

Maybe we bring it on ourselves. There's a large selection of comedy films due out in September, ranging from the promising to the pathetic. The question is, is the fact that we persist in paying to see bad comedies the reason they keep getting made?

'Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby', featuring Will Ferrell, and the ensemble of 'Little Miss Sunshine' look promising. 'Little Man' featuring Shawn and Marlon Wayans, and 'Beerfest', featuring lots of drinking jokes, look pathetic. 'Click' featuring Adam Sandler, could be either one, depending on your tolerance.

'Talladega Nights' was apparently pitched to the studio as "Six words: Will Ferrell as a NASCAR Driver". NASCAR is a sport that involves drivers racing around oval tracks in high-powered cars and the plot is a knowingly hokey parody of the clichéd sports movie story, with Ferrell's driver engaged in a rivalry with Sascha Baron Cohen, aka Ali G. The sport is immensely popular in America and Ferrell currently is too. This one looks like being pretty funny and, fresh from its resounding triumph at the US box office, a deserved hit.

The makers of 'Little Man', one of the dumbest looking films of the year, deserve to be hit. The Wayans family brought the world the 'Scary Movie' films and 'White Chicks', and everything suggests that 'Little Man' will be just as atrocious, as it's currently one of the ten worst rated on the Internet Movie Database. The plot here is that a gang of bees team up against some ninjas for aerial combat over Gibraltar. Actually that's made up, but it's better than the actual plot which goes something like this: a hardened criminal with stunted growth pretends to be a baby. He then leaves himself at a couple's door so they will adopt him and he'll be able to steal a jewel from them. That was not made up. Makes you yearn for the ninja/bee movie, doesn't it? Fear not, Sam Jackson is probably optioning the script as we speak.

Until then, we're stuck with 'Little Man'. Do we deserve to have this dreck foisted upon us? The morons who actually queued up to consume rotten tripe like 'Scary Movie' and still stood in line for its three sequels certainly do. Obviously no Skinny readers belong to that group ("Cough, um, guilty" – Ed). Especially not those who have managed to read this far.

Of the other comedies out this month, only 'Beerfest' seems comparably bad. It concerns competitive drinking and, coming from the director of 'The Dukes of Hazzard', looks like it might pass the time at best. 'Little Miss Sunshine' may be the month's surprise treat; a critically lauded comedy about a family's long journey to enrol a 7 year old in a beauty pageant, with lots of comical bickering along the way. Unfortunately, being a comedy made with wit and intelligence, it will probably only cater to a niche audience.

If that doesn't grab you, Adam Sandler stars in 'Click', where he finds that his TV remote can control his life. Dumb, but no worse than any other Adam Sandler film. There are, therefore, comedies for all intellects in September. Choose wisely, if you're able.