Slapstick

A comedy film which favors physical comedy -- such as pratfalls, tripping, falling, and other assorted lighthearted injuries -- over dialogue, plot and character development. These films combine a rapid editing style to keep the action moving and suggest an almost cartoonish representation of violence that's harmless and goofy. Slapstick has been around as long as film itself, and has roots in vaudeville. Silent cinema leaned heavily on slapstick's entertaining visual hijinks throughout the '20s. Silent comedians such as Buster Keaton, Charlie Chaplin, the Keystone Cops and Harold Lloyd employed the style for social commentary, often representing one man's struggle to survive in a rapidly changing, insane society. Comedy teams such as Abbott and Costello, Laurel and Hardy and The Three Stooges offered straight, lowbrow escapist slapstick without social messages attached, while the Marx Brothers' anarchic, unrestrained, nearly surreal antics and insults of the ‘30s (Animal Crackers, Duck Soup) pushed the style to the edge of sanity. Following the advent of sound, slapstick took a back seat to the more dialogue-driven humor of the screwball comedy and the sophisticated comedy. Slapstick resurfaced after the war, first in France with the gag-filled, intricately choreographed films of Jacques Tati (Monsieur Hulot's Holiday), then in America with films likeIt's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World and The Great Race and comedians like Jerry Lewis. The style gained large popularity through the genre-bending spoofs of director Mel Brooks in the ‘60s and ‘70s. The late ‘70s and ‘80s brought physical comedians like Chevy Chase, Dan Aykroyd, John Belushi and Steve Martin notoriety (The Jerk, Caddyshack, The Blues Brothers), while actor Jim Carrey and directors like the Farrelly Brothers (Dumb and Dumber, There's Something About Mary) have relied primarily on the form.

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