The Comedy Reviews

An essential portrait of a generation of people laughing so hard that they've forgotten the joke is on them.

Full Review | Original Score: 5/5

This is a lacerating portrait of the sort of narcissistic self-loathing that has kept educated, economically comfortable young people from achieving their true potential, from Benjamin Braddock to Hannah Horvath.

Full Review | Original Score: B+

Champions what it appears to mock and indicts what it appears to glorify.

Full Review | Original Score: B

The longest and dreariest 94 minutes I've spent on a movie this year.

Full Review | Original Score: 1/4

None of this is necessarily funny. That's the extent of the irony here.

Full Review | Original Score: 2.5/4

[A] relentlessly aimless, abrasive stab at black humor.

Full Review | Original Score: 1.5/4

All this is credible enough until Swanson exits the airtight bubble of his peers to bully New York City at large.

Full Review | Original Score: 2/5

The joke, I guess, is that there's nothing funny about "The Comedy."

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5

A mean-spirited piece of mumblecore that tries to provoke you, but only succeeds in boring you.

Full Review | Original Score: 0/4

Pushing the boundaries of taste isn't necessarily a bad thing, but the film is so busy daring its audience to hurl insults that it forgets to simply be funny.

Full Review

A billion times better than Tim and Eric's Billion Dollar Movie.

Full Review | Original Score: 3.5/4

A character study that tries to make the revolting compelling.

Full Review | Original Score: 2.5/4

If you can discern any critical distance or interesting perspective here, or even a good reason to spend 90 minutes in such company, I'm afraid the joke is on you.

Full Review | Original Score: 1/5

The movie may critique its antihero, but it also offers just one more venue in which he's allowed to wallow - while we pay his way.

Full Review | Original Score: 2/5

It's a long, painful sit that claws at interpretational ambition, but only nails the rare moment of enlightenment, wasting 90 minutes of screentime to acquire about 15 minutes worth of substance.

Full Review | Original Score: C-

The Comedy pretends to be a satire of entitlement, but it's made in a style so indulgent that the whole film feels entitled in the extreme.

Full Review | Original Score: C

[A] faux-courageous nondrama.

Full Review | Original Score: 1/5

The Comedy may not aspire to be the portrait of a generation, but it certainly offers a scary dissection of a faux-careless Brooklynite sensibility that threatens to be the undoing of everyone involved.

Full Review | Original Score: 8.3/10

An unconventional, unapologetic comedy that's unbelievably entertaining.

Full Review | Original Score: 9.5/10

Its audience may be self-selective in the extreme, but few films have better articulated the limits of irony as a force field against the world.

Full Review | Original Score: A-