The Shrine

Raunchy comedy is the most straight forward example. These films tend to nearly always be underrated, in my opinion.
Why? The great feeling of looking down your nose at something especially when there’s the side effect of making someone else embarrassed to have enjoyed it. Dirty Grampa is a great example - it’s been called racist, sexist, and the worst film of all time by critics. It got a 10% on Rotten Tomatoes. The funny thing is nearly all of the 10% of reviewers who gave it a positive review were black or women.

Dark comedy is a little more complex because I think there are multiple reasons people want to look down on it. First, they don’t want to be seen liking something disgusting and violent, which is often the case. Second, some people just fundamentally don’t enjoy being disturbed or made to feel uncomfortable. Ravenous is a great example of a very mixed review film that I thought was fantastic, but 51% of critics hated it - again, most of them are just looking down their noses at it because of the violence, gore, and weirdness and will dress up their virtue bias with a lot of big words and intellectual disagreements with what the film is trying to achieve. Add in a gimmick to show some shallow political point, the way pleasantville did, and they’ll think it’s brilliant (not a knock on Pleasantville, I love that film).

The comedy type that critics tend to be OK with, but the general public tends to frown on are the really obscure niche types, like the Coen Brothers Hail Caesar! I’m not even going to say it’s because critics want to feel smart by saying they enjoy it. I think it’s the sort of film that’s aimed at people who have a large appreciation for film, most critics fall into this category. Hail Caesar is a fantastic film if you’re familiar with the history and Hollywood films of the late 40s and early 50s, the communist blacklistings and all that stuff. Because it’s Coen Brothers it won’t hold your hand either, and most people will watch it and think “WTF is the point of this?”

I miss the raunchy teen comedy. I know they're considered "problematic" nowadays, but fuck they were funny.

I watched a few: Grimsby, Zola, and The Girl Next Door.

Zola is a new one on Netflix. It’s more of a raunchy dark comedy - surprising, when you mix the two genres the critics like it! This one holds an 88% on Rotten Tomatoes. The story is based off of a series of 140+ Twitter posts.



My thoughts: Dialogue is great, the style is great, but I you can tell a male audience wasn’t exactly the main target - not enough boob for a film about strippers, and maybe a bit heavy on the drama, and the one dude you could cheer for in the film was only in around the first 5-10 minutes and a few phone calls after - I was expecting showgirls by the trailer and such - maybe because that’s what I wanted - and I got something more like an R-rated Glow (in style).

The story is about a young woman who wants to make some money in Florida, she meets this 80’s side-pony tail looking girl who with her “roommate” is going to do some dances and make some money down in Florida. It’s a bit arty, but not sickeningly like Spring Breakers (if you haven’t seen that one yet, don’t).

I enjoyed the film, but came out a bit depressed, and needed to wash that away. So I popped in The Brothers Grimsby! This one is WAY over the top on the raunchy factor. It’s hilarious! But you’ll feel filthy after watching it.

The story is basically two brothers split in their youth and are reuniting down the road. One of them has become a Bond level super spy, while the other is a soccer hooligan with 11 kids. The hooligan wants to get back into the other’s life, but it happens to be during a massive international JB007 OHMSS style anti-terrorist mission.

It takes dick jokes to a whole new level. This scene is really NSFW:


So, again, I needed another film to watch as a cleanser. So The Girl Next Door.

Just watched The Girl Next Door, 2004. Elisha Cuthbert is one of the two women famous for raunchy comedies from my province - not born here. The other is Martha Macisaac (Superbad) who was born here, my sister worked with her on one of her early shows. Yes, PEI is a very small place.

This one is fairly contrived in its plot, but the scenes are all great (IMO). The music is a lot of Bowie and Bowie inspired stuff, and it really adds to the mood of the film. Elisha Cuthbert plays a character who looks a lot like a young Debbie Harry, Tim Olyphant’s character looks a lot like an old Sid Vicious, and then there’s a guy based on High Hefner. It’s one of those films where the POV twists perspective to change people from good guys to villains and vice versa - at the end, even the complete pieces of shit are seen in a good light - Tim Olyphant’s character seems to switch back and forth from good to evil, evil to good, about 6 or 7 times - although it’s not difficult to follow—IMO, the film from his perspective might have been even better. The main guy had this holier than thou “you’re better than the porn industry” attitude, and then he ends up getting to keep that attitude while making millions of dollars in the end and driving a BMW—somehow didn’t sit right with me.