Reply to thread

Message: [QUOTE="nelsonmuntz, post: 5330237, member: 833"] This thread is making my point, with a bunch of middle-aged white guys saying SNL isn’t funny anymore. Comedy is always generational, and ages poorly for the most part. Some examples: Sixteen Candles is a hilarious movie that absolutely speaks to Gen Xers that grew up in middle class and upper middle class suburbs. That movie has two really problematic plotlines (The Geek and the Cheerleader, and the exchange student) that are offensive to Millennials and Gen Z, despite the movie basically being an empowerment fantasy from the perspective of a 16 year old girl. The core plot is the hottest guy in the school going through all kinds of obstacles to be with the wallflower. Animal House is pretty much unwatchable now with anyone under 40. Caddyshack, focused on the more timeless theme of class conflict, and has aged a lot better than Animal House, even though Animal House was the much more successful movie at the time. Less controversial, but still relevant to the issue of timeliness in comedy, is a movie like Airplane. Try watching it with someone under 40. Young people didn't grow up watching disaster movies with contrived plots and cheesy special effects, so half the jokes in Airplane don't make any sense to them. My kids enjoyed Holy Grail, but I had to give a lot of context prior to watching it for some of the jokes to make any sense. Life of Brian is a bit more timeless, although a lot of context is missed by younger people. For example, the stoning scene is hilarious on several different levels, but kids that did not grow up in a society where religion was pervasive in our lives will not get the absurdity of all the rules for a stoning for using "Jehova" to describe a dinner. Young people think the joke is the women wearing beards, which they don't think is all that funny. Another example from a different perspective is Eurotrip (2004). I think Eurotrip is one of the 3 or so best teen sex comedies ever made, but it is an 80's/90's comedy that came out in 2004, so instead of being a big hit, it ended up flopping even though it became a cult classic on cable and now streaming. There are two scenes in that movie ("Scotty Doesn't Know" and the club in Bratislava) that are two of the funniest scenes in any teen comedy in history. But humor was changing in the 2000's, and the movie just didn't land with young audiences. SNL needs to get younger, and an 80 year old man from 3 generations ago is not the guy to do it. SNL needs some fresh blood at the top before it figures out what fresh blood it needs in the cast. Anyone who saw the movie Saturday Night will get that. [/QUOTE]

Verification: First name of men's bb coach