Monday
23Jun
The Day We All Stopped Laughing
Monday, June 23, 2008 at 4:20PM 
With Mike Myers' career as a box office superstar mining
comedy gold with each new film sputtering if not beginning to nose dive into
terra firma, Ryan Zeinert at
Film Wad has put together an excellent study on
the moment in time when 15 famous comedians "lost their funny."
I was immediately drawn to this for several reasons,
chief among them that I use funny as a noun, as in "bring the funny," "lost
their funny," etc. In fact, when saying pretty much the same thing we're
discussing here back on May 20th, I said Myers was "fresh out of funny."
Also, many years ago, one of my friends theorized that
musicians tend to go downhill after their first greatest hits album. There are a
couple of exceptions, like The Eagles and Elton John, both of whom had some of
their best songs pop up on later albums.
Likewise, another friend mounted the belief that
athletes usually go to pot after they marry an actress or a singer. In fact,
only Tony Parker of the San Antonio Spurs has performed better after marriage,
which is weird, because I only see him as a cuckolded husband in that
relationship.
So I like little pop culture catch-alls like that, and
this one, essentially a riff off Jumping the Shark, is timely and easy to
enhance.
I have to confess that I disagree with some of Filmwad's
assessments:
Dane Cook was never funny, and if he ever was
it ended long before Employee of the Month, just as
David Spade hasn't made me crack a smile since
he was on Saturday Night Live so Joe Dirt isn't really the last
straw;
Robin Williams stopped being funny a few years
before Patch Adams, but because he hadn't tried to be funny in a long
time, I can understand why they chose this one; and they have
Carrot Top on the list for Chairman of the
Board...wait, I thought this list was limited to comedians.
Overall, I think they got it right. Or right-ish.
Reader Comments (8)
Unbelievable that Chevy and Bill Cosby weren't 1 and 1A on that list; for me, it was European Vacation and Leonard Part 6/Ghost Dad (not) respectively that did them in for good...probably not a coincidence that they're known as two of the bigger showbiz A-holes around...
The saddest thing is theres no mention of Jim Carrey. i know alot of people never found him funny, but i thought he atleast used to be. Ace ventura 2 was the last decent movie he made....everything else just kind of...made me want to rip my ears off. Adam sandler is Sinking faster then you can say Little Nicky and i'm still trying to figure out why or how Rob Schnieder continues to get work. At least jimmy Fallon's dead....he's not dead? well for arguements sake, atleast jimmy fallon's dead.
Will Ferrell: The producers bad, Bewitched worse.
True about Will Ferrell, although his career has been so herky-jerky you can never tell what's awful and what's great. Jim Carrey didn't last long in my opinion. In fact, for some reason, I didn't even think of him for this list. Shows you how high on my list of comedians he was...
I THINK WILL FERRELL IS GREAT AND NEVER LOST HIS FUNNY , STEVE CARRELL SUCKED IN GET SMART, JIM CARREY JUST GOT SERIOUS , U ARE AN IDIOT IF U SAY DICK PRYOR EVER LOST HIS FUNNY!
#THNX.
Chris Tucker. He had great promise with Friday and Rush Hour, but hit the wall with Rush Hour 2. After that, he's pretty much turned into a "Where are they now?" candidate.
I think Pryor and Carlin are special cases. Their acting roles could be erratic as hell, but their stand-up was always interesting. When Pryor was in string of bad early eighties films, he was still doing great stuff onstage, and Carlin's best work, in my opinion, came during his fifties. Of course, when doing stand-up they didn't have to answer to an army of studio hacks. That might have helped.
FOR THE GUY Who said Will, Zoolander, Elf, Step Brothers, Talledaga Nights, Stranger Then Fiction.