Genre - Comedy

Typical Conventions

Most typically a 'hybrid genre' such as an action-comedy, a horror-comedy or a romantic-comedy (rom-com). These different hybrids tend to have different styles of comedy:

Action-Comedy: Slapstick humour, with one or two protagonists constantly falling, fighting or having unlikely accidents. Most Jim Carrey films are like this, such as Yes Man and Fun with Dick and Jane.

Horror-Comedy: These films tend to have a distinct tone of black comedy, a bleak sense of humour that an audience find funny even though it is not immediately obvious what the joke is. The Scary Movie films and Hot Fuzz and Shaun of the Dead have this type of comedy that proves to be a success with audiences.

Rom-Coms: The most popular type of comedy hybrid, aimed at a primarily female audience, but also young adult males can enjoy this type of film. These comedies can include types of comedy found in other films, such as slap-stick and black comedy, but Rom-Coms like to use sharp tongued whit and clever lines to produce an amusing story line or film. Furthermore, the situations that the protagonists often find themselves in can also be amusing on their own. Hugh Grant is a typical actor in this kind of film, evident in Notting Hill with Julia Roberts, who has a new Rom-Com out this year, Eat Pray Love.

Comedy is an audience-pleaser, with most of the story-lines being simple and easy to follow. Comedy films appeal to a wide range of people, not just a particular age group or gender, which is possibly one of the reasons as to why they do so well. However, because so many are made, a lot of them are over-looked, or don't do as well as they should do, because there simply are so many circulating around at one time. This can prove difficult for distributors and film makers alike.