Why Aren’t Movies Fun Anymore?

Playfulness, connection and flow. According to author Catherine Price in her book The Power of Fun, those are the three elements that make up real fun. Real fun, as opposed to fake fun like scrolling in your phone, is a delightful and often spontaneous confluence of play, a connection with others, and an easygoing Zen-like state of unforced joy.

Playfulness, connection and flow—it’s a good guide to why movies today aren’t that much fun. Few have these three elements. According to Collider, the five best comedies of 2023 are: The Holdovers, Poor Things, Asteroid City, Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret, Barbie. These are all good movies—but are they fun? Compare them to the comedies of the 1980s—Beverly Hills Cop, Back to School, Ruthless People, Stripes, Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, Fast Times at Ridgemont High, Little Shop of Horrors. Barbie is a sociology lecture compared to, say, Ghostbusters. Airplane!, A Fish Called Wanda, The Blues Brothers? Fun, fun, fun. Eddie Murphy in the 80s was fun incarnate. Film critic Anne Hornaday once said of Steve Martin, “It’s a delight to watch him chase after a cab.” Can you say the same about Amy Schumer? Ferris Bueller is an entire movie about playfulness, connection and flow.

Over the past few decades, fun movies were gradually replaced by comedies that felt they had to push the scatological and sexual edge—The Hangover effect. Film critic Carey O’Dell summed it up well: “The ‘adult’ language, gross-out shtick, scatological references, sexual entendre, and anatomical focus that now populates many of the worst films coming out of Hollywood—from Spring Breakers to The Paperboy—often makes these films disturbing, not just stupid or slow-paced, to sit through.” Adam Sandler always seems to be trying too hard. His little baby voices are annoying. Jim Carey’s obviously fun. He may have been the last one to pull it off.

The obsession with sex and bathroom humor, along with the shoehorning in of “socially relevant” messages, prevents the flow of real fun, which doesn’t take things too seriously. Superhero movies are especially serious. In Rebel Moon, Zach Snyder remade Star Wars minus the fun.

I just watched the just-released and remastered edition of Running Scared, one of my favorite films from the 1980s. Billy Crystal and Gregory Hines play two Chicago cops who decide to retire. Once they do they start being overly cautious on the job, and this makes it harder to bring down drug kingpin Julio, played by Jimmy Smits. Fans of the film often praise the chemistry between Crystal and Hines. The two men are both athletes (Hines a dancer, Crystal a good baseball player) and they’re comfortable in their own bodies. I worked at a movie theater in the 1980s, and still remember the audience exploding with delight at some of the scenes; the one where Hines confronts the little boy at the doorway always brought the house down. 

I also still love the sequence shot in Key West. In one scene, set to Michael McDonald’s “Sweet Freedom”—what a pure 80s track! Michael McDonald - Sweet Freedom (1986).

Crystal and Hines glide down the highway on mopeds, each man with a gorgeous girl on the back. Whenever a car or truck cruises by, the view’s briefly blocked, only to reveal the same two men except now with two different women on the back. It happens in multiple shots—these guys are in Florida getting lucky and having the time of their lives. It’s not even a sexist gag. It would work as well or better with two female leads and beefcake riding in the back.

Sex appeal. Humor. Fantasy. Fun. Flow. They’d never allow it today.