By John Sutherlin
Have you ever watched a comedy movie before? What decade was it from? And have you ever noticed that comedy movies don’t get released as often? Well in this article we are going to discuss what happened to comedy movies. Let’s first quickly talk about where comedy movies originated from. The first full length comedy movie was released in 1914 and was titled “tillies punctured romance” and starred a young Charlie Chaplin. After this movie was released the genre grew and grew and led to big names in the 1930s and 1940s. Eventually big musicians and serious actors got in on it as well.
Comedy’s next major evolution was in the late 1970s to 1980s with such movies being “Airplane” made 1980 and “Ghostbusters” made in 1984. During this decade the genre action-comedy was revolutionized with the iconic movie series “Beverly Hills Cop” released in 1984 this would end up leading to one of the biggest genres which lead to big action stars leaning into as well.
Such as Sylvester Stallone in “Tango & Cash” made in 1989 and Arnold Schwarzenegger in “Kindergarten Cop” made in 1990. Leading into the 90s more and more comedians started to pop up. In 1989 the movie “I’m Gonna Git You Sucka” came out and led to the Wayan Brothers becoming household names on top of that this movie starred a young Chris Rock who later became a big actor in the late 90s and 2000s.
The Wayans would go on to make comedy classics such as “Don’t Be A Menace…” created in 1995 and the Scary Movie franchise as well as “White Chicks” from 2004. Also during this decade previously serious actors branched into comedy such as Charlie Sheen who at that point had starred in the war drama “Platoon” in 1988 and the crime drama “Wall Street” in 1987 but going into the 90s lead him to pivot to comedy. Starting with “Men at Work” from 1990 where he starred alongside his brother Emilio Estevez and the Hot Shots movies in the late 80s early 90s which parody’d Top Gun and the Rambo movies. Another big player in this decade was Adam Sandler who rose to fame due to “Happy Gilmore” released in 1996.
In the 2000s the genre grew even more popular with movies like the previously mentioned White Chicks and the Scary Movie series. Leading into the 2010s the genre started to plummet in popularity even though there was still huge successes like the 21 Jump Street movies. Suddenly comedy movies started to show up less and less. The Scary Movie franchise stopped with the fifth one and the big budget ones started to flop. This is where we are today. Thankfully this year we have seen a huge hit that was Scary Movie six and the director of the Obsession released in 2026 has been in talks about doing a new comedy duo movie. So hopefully the comedy genre isn’t all lost. We have seen this trend follow other types of movie genres such as action and gangster movies. Only time will tell.
beniciapaw.com 