The Dark Side of Comedy

I was reading an interesting review about the new Alvin and the Chipmunks movie when noticing that the reviewer felt that the movie touched on some rather serious points and that, contrary to popular belief, the movie is actually well developed and gives the chipmunks more of a personality than you would expect. That took me back to "50 first dates", an interesting movie by Adam Sandler I was conned into watching that was actually a very moving and sentimental picture about what it means to suffer from anterograde amnesia, a rather serious illness that people may have never known about otherwise. In fact some victims of anterograde amnesia, where the person forgets what happens after the injury, also suffer from retrograde amnesia as well, the type we typically associate with amnesia; such is caused global amnesia.

Now without 50 first dates I never would have even thought to research that, but it makes you think about all of the other serious movies that were disguised as comedy (despite my appreciation for the movie it is very hard to watch it, in fact I rarely laughed and it is a bit sad). This isn't the first time one of Adam Sandler's movies have gotten me to think either, of course any movie by prototypical conscientious comedians (with the exception of perhaps Dave Chappelle) will get you to think, pretty much every movie by Chris Rock has a message and even Bernie Mac and Cedric the Entertainer have a message somewhere in their movies. Not to mention the fact that some comedians, like Robin Williams, offer compelling performances in serious dramas (The Fisher King & One Hour Photo) as well as traditional comedies (Death to Smoochy).