Movie Season / RESEARCH

THE COMEDY

The genre of comedy is very broad and within there are many sub-genres, what sub-genres best describe Will Ferrell's films and his comedy stylings in general?

.‘Fish out of water’ comedy. 

The main character (or characters) finds himself in an unusual environment, which drives most of the humor.

-Taken from Wikipedia.com

This kind of comedy isn't a great representation of Ferrell's film, it perfectly describes one of his first lead roles, the film, Elf. In which he plays a human who is raised by elf's, is then taken to New York to find his real father. 

It is often that in Ferrell's films his character receives a serious "reality check" falling from a high position. This relating to the 'fish out of the water' style comedy. 

  

.A Parody or Spoof film

A comedy that satirizes other film genres or classic films. Such films employ sarcasm, stereotyping, mockery of scenes from other films, and the obviousness of meaning in a character's actions.

-Taken from Wikipedia.com

Instead of parodying another film or genre, Ferrell's films tend to parody in general, American culture. Most of his characters being a low brow representation of America's every man. These men however being in some form of authority/power. Furthermore his films often parody specific parts of American culture, notoriously of Ferrell, sport and also specific era's. 

Examples of this:

Blades of Glory- parody of figure skating/sport

Anchorman- parody of an era, culture/ cultural satire 

Talladega Nights- non-informed parody of a sport/ southern people 

Semi-pro- parody of an era/ sport and an organization

Zoolander- parody of culture/satire/ fashion world. 

From this i have tried to briefly describe the comedy stylings within Ferrell's films...

"Ferrell’s films mostly derive humour from parodying an era and or sport within American culture. Many of his films often including Cultural satire, and a tounge-in-cheek take on the subject of the film. Ferrell has become known of late for his sport comedies. Films parodying late 70’s basketball, NASCAR racing, Little league soccer and the world of figure skating. His comedy in general tends to take the body of yelling, public nudity and erratically spurting ridiculous remarks and statements, his characters often being dim-witted, self-involved sexual deviants." 

- Mitch Gibbons, 2010

I think this is a pretty spot on explanation of his humour, in terms of the task ahead it is the 'Eratically spurting ridiculous remarks and statements' that i want to really focus on and be the selling/focus point of the idents. One of the greatest qualities of Ferrell's films is the 'quotability' of them, in the way that all these humorous random comments that come out in the films are easily applied to real life, and it is what the majority of people remember from the film. 

So my idents will be mostly type based. 

 This is a short video which i think represents Mr. Ferrell's type of comedy...

And this video shows Ferrell's skills in impersonation and a different side of comedy than his films...