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

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

Full Review | Original Score: 3.5/4

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-

Tim Heidecker's Swanson does not amuse us in spite of the pity he inspires but because of it.

Full Review | Original Score: 3.5/4

A seemingly sincere movie about a deeply ironic and unfulfilled man as he belongs to a culture - hell, maybe even an entire generation - terrified of sincerity.

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a challenging film that may ultimately be bulls***, [but] deserves tremendous respect for its clarity of vision.

Full Review | Original Score: B

Transgressively brilliant... an itchy critique of entitlement starring avant-garde comedian Tim Heidecker as one of Williamsburg's overprivileged.

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This is, in effect, "Arthur" meets "Jackass."

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For a catalog of aggressively stupid, socially deviant male behavior, Rick Alverson's cheekily titled The Comedy is not without a certain subversive intelligence.

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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.

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