Hmmm. I’d have to disagree with you on this one. I enjoyed all the movies you specifically hate so much. While I think Anderson’s humor IS subtle and understated in a lot of places, I can still see where you are coming from. After all, I used to think TV shows like “Mork and Mindy” used to be hilarious until my sense of humor matured.

And didn’t the “Sports Night” producer create that turd series “West Wing,” too?

I thought Anchorman was pretty good too … even though I had super high expectations for it. My “mature” comment was a pretty much a jab at myself too, since I admit I used to watch all sorts of shows - including Alf.

On another note, the British TV sitcom “The Office” is pretty good.

I laught more in Rushmore, Tenenbaums and Lost in Translation than I do in most main stream comedies. I enjoy Anchorman and Tommy Boy just as much as the next guy. Just because something makes you laugh in a different way, doesn’t mean it is not a comedy. These movies defintely bend the categorization of movies, but they are not dramas. I am sure someone has already coined the term dramadies. The fact that Owen Wilson and Wes Anderson can produce such unique movies in the midst of such mediocrity should be comended.

I saw previews for Punch Drunk Love and it was never presented as a normal comedy. The music, the poster and filming should have given people clues to the tone of this movie. Maybe people should do a little more research before they go to the movies.

Conforming to mediocrity. Let me ask you something. This is something I’ve always wondered about people who just LOVE movies like these and people like David who get all into bands that no-one else knows and then stops listening to them the moment they get a song on the radio:

Is it better because it’s good, or is it better because it’s different? Just because something doesn’t conform doesn’t make it any good. That alone is not worthy of praise. Nonconformity is not genius, not art. Not all by itself, anyway. Celebrating a Wes Anderson movie as a great comedy is like celebrating a turd on a pedestal in a modern art museum. It sure is different, but does that make it better?

No.

Too juicy a little thought string not to jump in on:

Nate raises a habit/tendency of many designers and artists that often gets us placed on everybody’s dismissal list: the “it’s only good if I’m almost the only one who’s ever heard of it or appreciated it” urge…

Obscurity in artistic pursuits is something that’s become an extraordinary holy grail for most contemporary ventures - the more idiosyncratic, unusual, unexpected, uncommon, outsider, awkward, obtuse, etc. something is, the more it’s considered to be the product of a single individual pursuing personal goals (the merits of those personal goals are pretty much left by the wayside more often than not - it’s simply a “I forged new horizons and trod new ground” mentality).

In the best examples of things that seem to be overlooked or not as widely embraced as they could be, you can find those sometimes still-rough gems of ideas, approaches, or moments that just seem so lacking in the more polished, streamlined, overproduced versions of the same medium (film, music, literature, art, cars, etc.)

Comedy, probably more than almost any other endeavor, is an amazingly ellusive pursuit - it encompasses so many different varieties and styles, and may strike someone as extraordinarily funny one moment and remarkably unfunny the next…It relies heavily on the mood and receptiveness of the audience and may never work the same way twice, or, if it gets too general, may become “universally” funny to the extent that it’s simply bland…

Wes Anderson and P.T. Anderson both tread a slim, slim line between something intended to be funny and something intended to be serious, and it’s the tension between those two things that often results in the range of humor they explore - it was especially bizarre and kind of shocking to see Adam Sandler basically performing his general version of cartoonish buffoon in “Punch Drunk” but to be performing it in a film environment that was largely heavier, more serious, and more alien. It made his typical act seem a little scared, awkward, and threatened (at the same time being somewhat scary, threatening, and uncomfortable in return) - it wasn’t really that funny, but it was kind of a remarkable feat of direction on P.T. Anderson’s part to do that…

Without the more cartoony, larger-than-life scenarios of something like “Happy Gilmore”, “The Wedding Singer”, or “The Waterboy”, what seemed like over-the-top, silly, knee-slap comedic acting became totally foreign…Weird, not very popular, hard to put your finger on, and not necessarily for everyone’s taste.

Design & the arts in general always attract a large number of individuals who are really drawn to the offbeat, bizarre, and atypical - that becomes a major drawback when we start to only value the offbeat, left-of-center, and grotesque for the simple repetition of that shock experience, and when we start to constantly scour and seek out those things to the absolute exclusion of the really well-done, but more mainstream examples of the craft as well.

I might also hazard that Wes Anderson is making movies that are intentionally not very contemporary in their style and approach - he talks about the strong influence of many 1960’s and 1970’s American and European films on his technique (which may simply be him name-dropping to make his own work sound more important, or may be a legitimate source of inspiration and influence), and especially after watching several of Hal Ashby’s movies from the 70’s and even early 80’s (“Harold & Maude”, “Being There”, even “Shampoo” to a degree), it’s tough not to see where Wes has gotten a lot of his motivation and influence from.

I think it’s highly appropriate to consider Wes Anderson from a design standpoint, however, because all of his films are so intensely, specifically art-directed and designed. It’s always a bit like his characters exist in dollhouses (especially with “Tenenbaums”), but it’s also such a director who obsesses over so many of the little details of his films. It makes them very rewatchable and visually fantastic (if a bit undernourished from a character standpoint - even those seem to flesh out more on repeat viewings).