Article: What is it with the Hollywood comedy sidekicks?

In which our intrepid writer bemoans the trend that has belied many a Hollywood blockbuster…

OK: this may read as a bit of a rant.

This article came about because I recently had the misfortune to sit down and watch the recent remake of The Mummy. I must admit that the omens (aka reviews) were not good, but I was determined to give it a go and make my own mind up. There have been a number of movies in recent years that have had bad press, but I’ve quite liked – John Carter (2012), The Lone Ranger (2013), even Tom Cruise’s Edge of Tomorrow (2014), which was way, way better than the box-office receipts would suggest. I was hoping that this would be another maligned movie.

Now I guess I must also say that my critical brain was not set to a particularly high setting – it’s a Summer blockbuster, a popcorn movie that I was not, frankly, expecting to make the intellectual part of my brain (if such a thing exists, of course!) go into overdrive. It’s entertainment, I told myself, and therefore there should be minimal character development, lots of noise, huge visual spectacle and big, large, no – ginormous explosions expected, even demanded.

So….after a neat, if rather over-portentous introduction from scene-chewing Russell Crowe, (see also Man of Steel) the movie moves to Mesopotamia/Iraq, where action hero Nick Morton (aka Tom Cruise) is using the present day to accrue valuable ancient artifacts for sale. So far, so expected.

Ah, but about 6 minutes in – there it was. The curse of the current blockbuster, my nemesis.

Corporal Vail. Tom Cruise’s valiant sidekick, who spends the next ten minutes running, shouting, screaming, making inane comments (Whew!…. Wow!…..What’s happening?’) and so-called ‘smart’ witticisms to help explain Tom’s role in the movie. (“Wow…. That was intense!”)

It was bad enough to make me want to stop watching.

Luckily, I didn’t.  The good news is that, whilst it is far from perfect, it does get better (Though you probably have seen many of the best bits in the numerous clips and trailers out there.)

But it made me think (so I guess the intellectual bit of mon cerebellum woke up.)

It’s not the first movie in recent years that has been spoilt for me by this ‘innovation’. I could also mention Jurassic World (2015), with its annoying scientist Lowery Cruthers (coincidentally played by Jake Johnson, the actor who also played Corporal Vail). There’s the irritating scientific duo of Newton Geiszler and Herman Gottleib, played by Charlie Day and Burn Gorman in Pacific Rim (2014), whose mere bumbling presence on the screen destroys any attempt to suggest a degree of plausibility in the movie. What is it with this need to include characters whose mere presence shatters the precious sense of belief required for these movies to work?

It is Hollywood playing to the lowest common denominator, the ‘comic relief’ to counterpoint the otherwise dark and creepy things going on elsewhere in the film. I understand that. But why do we need it so unsubtly? Perhaps more importantly, why do we get it at all? What is it that makes Hollywood directors insist on including such morons to detract from what could otherwise be a good movie?

For every character of quality there’s a whinging, whining, screaming character like John Turturro’s Seymour Simmons in the Transformers movies. For every C3PO there’s a Jar Jar Binks.

It’s not entirely a new concept either – thinking further back, I enjoyed much of Sylvester Stallone’s Judge Dredd (1995), except for the appearances of ‘comedian’ Rob Schneider as Dredd’s clumsy fellow criminal ‘Fergee’ Ferguson. Similarly Luc Besson’s The Fifth Element (1997) was wonderfully visual and imaginative, until the appearance of Chris Tucker as futuristic DJ (and Prince-a-like) Ruby Rhod. (I really like most of Besson’s movies, but this aspect does worry me about the up-coming Valerian.) Going further back, movies like Abbott and Costello Meet the Mummy (1955) have a certain dated unsubtle charm that has not aged well. But ‘being funny’ does not mean having to be stupid.

There are times when it can work. Weirdly, in the same movie as Ruby, Gary Oldman’s turn as megalomaniac Jean-Baptiste Emanuel Zorg did not jar. It was over the top without being silly, without being deliberately stupid, without creating the feeling that the character was there but for no other reason than to ‘make me laugh’.

Of course, it can go wrong. No humour at all can be as bad as the examples I’ve given. Batman vs Superman seemed unremittingly po-faced and grim, although in the grand scheme of things this was by far one of its lesser criticisms. (When humour was attempted, as with Jesse Eisenberg’s awful Lex Luthor, it seemed woefully forced.) Wonder Woman, by comparison, had humour without being annoyingly so.

Reading this back I do realise that it may read as a personal diatribe against comedians in SF/Fantasy films, or a cry for po-faced solemnity in movies. I know that, as global problems go, this is a  relatively small issue. But as a regular movie-watcher and cinema-goer I’m starting to avoid movies with the merest chance of such a character appearing.

I guess the issue is, where do we draw the line? When do we make a stand? When do we say, “Enough is enough!”? Hollywood is going to keep using these characters if we continue to pat to see them, in the mistaken belief that it is those amusing cretins that keep us dweebs handing over our money.

How do we get the powers that be to realise that many of us would love a movie that combines humour with an intelligence, a character that isn’t a main, who is amusing but not annoying, so that we are laughing with the characters, not at them?  Characters who do not need everything explaining to them, or feel that they need to explain everything to the audience?

Or am I alone in thinking this?

Mark

Share this post: on Twitter on Facebook on LinkedIn