The Comedic Packing-Peanuts Theory

In the three glorious months where I was considered an editorial intern for the film blog Screen Junkies, I started thinking about features I could pitch to write for that website. I had approximately one published, the sample piece I sent in when I applied for the job, mostly because I was scared to death of rejection, and also I didn't think many of them were that good.

One of them, however, I did think was good.

I hereby present to you that one good story, "The Comedic Packing-Peanuts Theory," and not a moment too soon (you'll find out why in a minute or fifteen, depending on reading speeds, I guess).

Quick. Name a romantic comedy that wasn't good. Who were the leads? Who were the leads' friends or coworkers in the movie?

You probably answered "someone blandly attractive and nominally likeable" and "funny comedians stifled by the script" to those last two questions. This, my friends, is the theory.

Well, not so much a theory, more just an observation, but theory sounds much better.

I noticed it first when watching the trailer for What Happens in Vegas (not the actual movie, mind you, but I gleaned enough so that it seems pertinent). Sure, Ashton Kutcher and Cameron Diaz have some claim to being "funny," as they incited chuckles from us a long while ago, but no one would confuse them with the great comic minds of our time, especially when paired with a script that wasn't written by Dan Harmon, an associate of Harmon, or someone British*. They're put in a movie like that because they're pretty affable faces (objectively; subjective appreciation of them will vary wildly) who can put moviegoers in a theater.

But once the moviegoers are in the theater, the filmmakers feel a half-assed need to entertain them. Preposterous, I know, they already have the money, but they're compelled to nonetheless. This is where they enlist the help of popular comic personas who need the money because while they are quite hilarious, stand up isn't a lucrative living unless you've managed to time-travel back to when people cared about it and/or are part of the Blue Collar Comedy Tour.

That's why producers can pay folks like Rob Corddry, Zach Galifianakis, Jason Sudekis, and Andrew Daly to come in and make shit funny without a script. It's a time-honored staple of the 21st century romantic comedy to rely solely upon the fact that someone is funny in real life to make their movie funny.

You see, if Ashton Kutcher were a vase (pronounced "vazzze," not "vase"), Corddry, Galifianakis, and Sudekis would be the packing peanuts the filmmakers use to pad him in the box marked "Fragile" that is the bad romantic comedy. Hence, Comedic Packing-Peanuts.

What's even more interesting is the four mentioned in that movie can lead you down multiple rabbit holes of bad romantic comedy-dom illustrating the theory. For example, even looking at Andrew Daly's IMDB profile took me to Life as We Know It which itself featured Rob Huebel.

Rob Corddry was in The Heartbreak Kid, Failure to Launch, and some movie called Wedding Daze, which I can only assume fits the mold of what I'm talking about.

Galifianakis is a prime offender; he seemed to be ahead of the curve in this game, then got out because he lucked into being a pretty gigantic star. But before The Hangover, there was Heartbreakers and Out Cold, both significantly ahead of their time in being bad romances that tried to use auxiliary characters to make their films less bad.  Both released in 2001, they were the harbingers for the state of romantic comedies in the new era.

I saved Sudekis for last because it seems like he's going to become the new face of the Comedic Packing-Peanuts Theory. I say this because he was in the movie that I noticed recently that corroborated my theory, Going the Distance. Justin Long and Drew Barrymore are kind of likeable, but nowhere near as funny as they think they are, and the script for that movie is nowhere near as funny is it thinks it is. Enter Sudekis, Charlie Day, Jim Gaffigan, and Rob Riggle. Bam, movie saved by having funny people around (I actually don't know, I never saw the movie).

And it's timely that I'm writing this the day of No Strings Attached's release. Definitely not a coincidence ("Hey, what should I write tomorrow? Oh look! That same commercial for No Strings Attached I've seen fourten fu--gasp! I know what to write about!") This movie is bursting at the seams with comic packing peanuts, and, surprise surprise, stars Ashton Kutcher. It also stars Natalie Portman, but I don't really know how to assess that one; maybe she wanted to follow up really crazy sexualization in Black Swan with quirky mediocre sexualization to balance things out.

Anyway, there's an interesting inversion at play with this film, wherein the female lead gets the best of the comic packing peanuts.  Mindy Kaling is immensely funny on "The Office" and in general, and Greta Gerwig has a weird hybrid quality to her, as being someone who is funny but also gives the film (absolutely unwarranted) indie sensibility. Watch Greenberg and this will make a lot more sense.

But that isn't to say the Ash-man doesn't get his share of packing peanuts. Jake Johnson was really funny in that one scene in Get Him to the Greek where he has to break his cell phone, and I seem to be the only person that enjoyed the film Paper Heart, which featured him extensively. Then there's Ludacris, whose had funny music videos, and, let's be real here--if Diddy can be legitimately funny, I assume a rapper who has more of a built-in sense of humor can count for the packing peanuts theory.

And this isn't even mentioning Abby Elliot and Nasim Pedrad, resident attractive girls on "Saturday Night Live," or more classically trained funny older folk like Kevin Kline (wait, Kevin Kline is in this movie? No way!) or Cary Elwes (Wesley from The Princess Bride?! What?  I gotta see this--Ah, see, I'm falling prey to the theory as we speak)

You may be saying, "Hey, this is only a handful of examples, and some of them are tenuous at best! You're just bored and trying to waste my time with your theories that anyone who actually watches movies like these wouldn't give two shits about! And I don't even know half of the names you're blathering on about! To hell with you and your long-winded-albeit-conversational-in-tone blog!"

Well, you'd be absolutely just in saying so. But there are reasons for this sloppiness. One, I'm quite lazy, and didn't do much research for this, as it would have required me to watch the movies in question. Second, I could have made a lot more tenuous connections to blather on about, so just be glad I didn't go through Ashton Kutcher's full IMDB filmography.

Let's just put it this way: If Jason Sudekis, Rob Corddry, or any cast member of "The Office" is in a supporting role in a given movie, there's an 80% chance you have a romantic comedy with bland leads on your hands. It's not a perfect science, but it's better than anything the science community has given us regarding mediocre romantic comedy research, you must admit that.

*Those are the two qualifying factors for being a great comic mind in the past two years, as evidenced again by observation and nothing else.