Box Office Prophets: A-Lists

A-List: Black Comedies

May 29, 2003

She's right - Mattt Dillon was a bad choice.

This time around, black comedy is the subject for this week’s A-list. After coming up a few entries short in my original thoughts, I asked the other Box Office Prophets for their suggestions and it quickly became apparent that part of the problem was determining the definition of a black comedy. This uncertainty would seem to explain part of the problem with the rather hit and miss nature of the format. How does one make a good movie when there’s no simple way to define the genre? As for me, I’ve decided to take the easy way out and just provide examples of what I consider to be good black comedies by whatever my definition is. It’s kind of like the art cliché - I know it when I see it.

Heathers

I’ll start here, since regular readers of this column would fully expect this movie to be at the end of my list. Yes, Heathers is my all time favorite black comedy but it’s nearly my all-time favorite movie, period. Veronica (Winona Ryder) meets up with JD (Christian Slater) and realizes that her high school life as part of the most powerful clique in school isn’t everything that it would appear to be from the outside. The popular people in school start to fall victim to staged suicides. Memorable dialogue and biting satire make the film much more entertaining and memorable than this capsule makes it sound.

To Die For

We got the bubbleheaded bleach-blonde, comes on at five.
She can tell you about the plane crash with a gleam in her eye.
It's interesting when people die, give us dirty laundry.”

I’ve always thought that trailer for To Die For made one of the best uses of music ever in its use of Don Henley’s Dirty Laundry. In one of her early roles, Nicole Kidman gives a fantastic performance as an aspiring newscaster who is willing to do anything to advance her career. Kidman’s character schemes to do away with her career blocking hubby, seduce a hormonally-driven but not very bright high school kid, and get her career making scoop all at the same time. However, since she is more driven than smart, her grand scheme seems to come together almost in spite of her planning.

War of the Roses

Michael Douglas and Kathleen Turner face off in the ultimate ugly divorce. Nothing is off limits and no action is too low as the Roses battle over every little piece of property and wrestle with the fact that they continue to share, or rather live in the same but clearly demarked house. Treasured trinkets, pets, and personal attacks are all viable targets in this entertaining movie. Be sure that your loved one really loves you before sitting down to watch this one together.

Shallow Grave

The first of the Danny Boyle/Joel Hodges/Ewan McGregor films that include Trainspotting and A Life Less Ordinary, Shallow Grave starts innocently enough with Christopher Eccleston, Kerry Fox, and McGregor playing three young, successful professionals sharing a flat. They decide to take on an additional flat mate, which results in one of the most cruelly funny scenes in memory as they brutally belittle and insult the prospective borders in a series of interviews. They finally settle on a new flatmate in Hugo, who is relatively quiet and gruff. The movie really gets started when Hugo dies in bed and leaves behind a suitcase full of cash. Our three protagonists conspire to get rid of the body and keep the cash, and then fun really starts. In the very definition (well, my definition anyway) of black comedy, there is a hardware shopping trip that must be heard to be believed. Paranoia sets in between the three flatmates as the money does evil things to the trio as the film heads to a surprising end.

The Last Supper

In this little seen movie, an ensemble cast (including an early turn by Cameron Diaz), portrays a group of liberal college students who decide to take a stand and actually do something as opposed to falling victim to their own self-critique that liberals just stand around and talk about problems without ever doing anything. After getting a taste of killing via a mostly accidentally stabbing, our little group decides to invite what they deem to be the most objectionable right wingers to dinner. An example dinner guest is a priest who firmly believes that AIDS is a gay plague intended to cleanse the planet. The dinner guests are given a chance to explain their position as well as repent. Those who don’t are given a glass of wine from the bottle that contains arsenic (shades of another of my favorite movies: Arsenic and Old Lace). Again, death changes everything and the various characters react in different fashions to their actions. The movie is a bit simplistic but entertaining none the less.

Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb

From the also considered/historical basis list, I have a single nomination in Dr. Strangelove. In the Box Office Prophet staff discussion on this topic, it was put forth that black comedy is a relatively young genre with the genesis in cynicism that we start to see in the ‘60s. Dr. Strangelove is an excellent example of that time period in addition to being a very good comedy set against dark themes. It just doesn’t happy to neatly fit into my definition of a black comedy and thus ends up just off the list.