re: Was the early 2000s comedies the golden era of comedy movies?

Hot Take-

Comedy movies started failing when SNL stopped turning out funny actors.

David Spade and Chris Farley
Adam Sandler
Will Ferrel

Think of how many funny movies those individuals are responsible for.

Can anyone think of an SNL cast member that even approaches those above, in the last 5 or even ten years?

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Hot Take-

Comedy movies started failing when SNL stopped turning out funny actors.

David Spade and Chris Farley
Adam Sandler
Will Ferrel

Think of how many funny movies those individuals are responsible for.

Can anyone think of an SNL cast member that even approaches those above, in the last 5 or even ten years?

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Maybe, but SNL wasn't the ONLY creator of funny actors.

Some came from SCTV:
John Candy
Rick Moranis
Eugene Levy
Harold Ramis
Martin Short
Catherine O'Hara

Others, like Gene Wilder, were classically trained.


The thing, if you want to be successful these days, you can't JUST be a comedic actor. Even the ones with the best comedic timing better have action appeal or sex appeal. No exec is going to green light a new, unique comedy with an actor or actress that isn't hot or at least surrounded by a hot cast. Maybe something comedy-adjacent, but it'd better have some action in it.

So many things going against another Blazing Saddles, EVEN if you don't include the PC argument:

International Audiences (how many jokes in Blazing Saddles work in China?)

Hot/Sexy or Action-ready Lead that is also funny

Existing IP to help Hollywood execs feel more comfortable pulling the trigger




Let's face it - if you want quirky comedy, you're going to have to look in the nooks and crannies of streaming services. Wide-release motion pictures just aren't going to have the same appeal.

Let's also not forget - a big name isn't a "default hit" anymore - just look at Dolittle with RDJ in 2020. RDJ wasn't enough to carry it, and he was probably top 5 among actors at the time.

I knew someone would bring up SCTV but they haven't been relevant in decades. They became irrelevant much earlier than SNL did.

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I knew someone would bring up SCTV but they haven't been relevant in decades. They became irrelevant much earlier than SNL did.

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SCTV went off the air.

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In the fall of 1983, NBC wanted the late Friday-night time slot for the new Friday Night Videos; SCTV, despite its unexpected popularity among younger U.S. audiences, was not a high priority with the network and essentially acted as a placeholder for two years while NBC reevaluated its late-night programming strategies. SCTV was offered a slot on early Sunday evenings by NBC (presumably 7 p.m./6 Central), but because the producers would have had to alter the show's content to appeal to "family" audiences (per a 1975 amendment to the Prime Time Access Rule), as well as face CBS's dominant 60 Minutes (against which several NBC shows had failed since the 1981 cancellation of The Wonderful World of Disney), they declined.

Instead, for its final season, the show moved to the premium cable channels Superchannel in Canada and Cinemax in the United States, changing the name slightly to SCTV Channel. The running time was now 45 minutes, and new episodes (18 in total) were seen on alternating weeks from November 1983 to July 1984. For this final season, the cast consisted solely of Flaherty, Levy, Martin, and Short, although Candy, Thomas, and O'Hara all made guest appearances. Writer/performers Hemphill and Wilcox once again appeared semi-regularly.

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You can pretty much blame NBC for SCTV failing as early as it did. If they hadn't screwed with their time slot and asking for more "family friendly" bits, it might have been just as big as SNL and we'd have had two shows churning out comedic actors (three if you include the stint with In Living Color).

That's all well and good, but my observation about great comedy movies taking a backslide coinciding with SNL taking a backslide has still not been challenged.


SNL, and earlier SCTV, and ILC for a while, were churning out talent in comedic acting, and writing, that fueled all these great comedy movies in the 80's, 90's, early 2000's.