80s comedies versus 90s comedies

[sarcasm_made_Easy]

No more of a good and beautiful thing

[Compound]

When i look at the two lists i cant but help feel that on the whole 80s movies were smarter.  So i guess i just prefer them. 

Really? Revenge of the Nerds and Airplane were smarter than The Big Lebowski and Groundhog Day?

I mean, I like 80s comedies, but one thing they weren't was smart.

What? This Is Spinal Tap. A Fish Called Wanda. Monty Python's Meaning of Life. The Blues Brothers. Ruthless People. Time Bandits.  Dead Men Don't Wear Plaid. National Lampoon's Vacation. Ferris Bueller. Yeah, you can point to smart comedies in the 90s, and you can point  to dumb comedies but comparing Cheech and Chong's Next Movie to The Big Lebowski is just as invalid as comparing Brazil to 3 Ninjas Kick Back.

[Nunyerbiz]

Well, how smart is Vacation or Ferris Bueller? I think you're right on a lot of those, but...no on John Hughes. His movies can be really funny, but they're not particularly smart.

Out of curiousity, can you name a few "smart" comedies for reference?

[sarcasm_made_Easy]

I totally fail to see how trading spaces isnt smart. 

[sarcasm_made_Easy]

The Big Lebowski is smart because it references lots of events obliquely and the plot isn't that straightforward. It's also a re-telling of Chandler's "The Big Sleep."  The jokes are often ironic and depend upon the audience getting things that aren't spelled out for them right there.  A bunch of the ones you named are the same, I'd say--Spinal Tap, Time Bandits. 

Im not saying you said so, but you dont need those things to be smart. 

The jokes are all obvious and don't require any deeper thought than what you see on the screen.  The setup and payoff are all right there

i dont see how.  Yeah a lot of the jokes would be what i would call "traditional"  but they are not unfunny because of that.  Further the plot isnt the only thing going on.  Nature vs nuture is obvious (obviously) but despite that the movie is a dialog on that which is more than i could say for a lot of movies. 

[sarcasm_made_Easy]

If it requires the audience to fill in the missing pieces of the joke for it to be funny, then it's inherently a smarter piece.

I dunno about that.  I think that really comes down to preference.  For example dirty rotten scoundrels which you mention as being magnicent, totally fits your description of trading spaces IE; 

he jokes are all obvious and don't require any deeper thought than what you see on the screen.  The setup and payoff are all right there.

[sarcasm_made_Easy]

Fair enough. 

[mrbasehart]

I think that it's pretty easy to see that the 80s and 90s both had great comedies.  Now what about the decade just gone? Does that hold up to the previous two?

[sarcasm_made_Easy]

My favorite comedy of the 2000s was stranger than fiction. 

[sarcasm_made_Easy]

Wow, we like the same thing. Weird.  I like it a lot, but I like Anchorman better

We are posting on a rifftrax forum.  Unless your here ironically, we are gonna like/agree about a lot of things.