Comedy

Ever since Grandma Madea (Tyler Perry) took a chainsaw to her granddaughter’s sofa to claim the woman’s half of her home from her cheating husband, filmgoers have been in love with the comedy and drama of Tyler Perry. In Madea’s Big Happy Family, Madea’s niece receives bad news from her doctor. She wants to break it to her family over dinner, but as can happen with relations, many are feuding, so it is up to Madea to bring them all together. “Comedy is all around me,” Perry says of his work. “Even in some of my greatest sadness, I find […]

In this romantic comedy, single gal Rachel (Ginnifer Goodwin) always seems to lose out to her more vivacious and flirtatious friend, Darcy (Kate Hudson). But trouble arises when Darcy becomes engaged to Dex, for whom Rachel has had a secret crush since they were both in law school. Since she’s also just hit age 30, in a fit of honesty she confesses her love to Dex and discovers that the crush is mutual. That’s when things get complicated.

In African-American weddings, jumping the broom — a tradition that has its roots in African ritual — signifies the merging of two families. In the comedy Jumping the Broom, it may take a lot more than an old ritual to merge the ultra-upper-class family of bride Sabrina (Paula Patton) with the working class family of groom Jason (Laz Alonso), particularly when his mother’s pride surfaces in the first meeting of the in-laws at the bride’s parents estate on Cape Cod. But this is a romantic comedy, one produced by Bishop T.D. Jakes, so it’s no surprise that, with a bit […]

In Shaun of the Dead, comic actor Simon Pegg battled zombies. In Paul, he befriends an alien who needs help getting to his mother ship. Beyond the sci-fi premises, the films share another connection. Shaun was shot at a time when the damp British climate was being particularly nasty. Pegg swore he wanted to make a movie shot “somewhere it never rains, like a desert,” and said his next movie should be “a road trip with an alien in the American Southwest” where things were presumably warm and dry. A few years later, as Pegg was finishing Hot Fuzz, producer […]