Tropic ThunderIt may not be immediately obvious, but Ben Stiller’s Tropic Thunder is something of a 21st century rarity: a comedy with a plot. Unlike it's numerous contemporaries...

Following the crew of a mega-budget war movie who discover that their jungle location is slap-bang in the middle of a real war zone, it has a beginning, a middle, and an end.

But with multiplexes under increasing bombardment from feature-length sketches, rehashes of old sitcoms and spoofs so feeble they need help getting into the projection booth, it’s hard to believe that comedy movies once made the effort to tell a story.

From the golden era of Howard Hawks (Bringing Up Baby), Preston Sturges (The Miracle of Morgan Creek) and Billy Wilder (Some Like It Hot) through Dr Strangelove and early Woody Allen to modern-day greats like Trading Places, A Fish Called Wanda and Groundhog Day, the most memorable comedies put gags in context.

But thanks to character-regurgitators like Will Ferrell and Adam Sandler and the omnipotent writer-producer-director Judd Apatow, comedy in the new millennium is all punchline and no build-up.

Hollywood isn’t stupid, but it helps if the audiences are. Setting up new situations in different places (i.e. having a plot) costs time and money. So it makes business sense to turn attention deficiency into a global epidemic.

After all, if people are happy to pay to see the same joke over and over again, why bother coming up with new ones? As long as it makes ‘em laugh, what does it matter whether a guy’s licking a dog or a llama?

Of course, there is nothing inherently wrong with stringing a series of gags together and calling it a movie.

Gonzo comedy can and does work. Over the last 20 years, single-idea comedies have spawned a new generation of funnyfolk and a welter of ultra-successful franchises.

The Farrelly Brothers led the gross-out charge with Dumb & Dumber, Kingpin and There’s Something About Mary, making major comic players of Jim Carrey and Ben Stiller in the process. They teamed up for The Cable Guy and the domino effect from that shows no sign of slowing.

Stiller hit one-joke gold with Zoolander which gave a foot-up to his pal Ferrell who made Old School with Vince Vaughn who made a smash of Wedding Crashers with Owen Wilson who rejoined Stiller for Starsky & Hutch which featured Ferrell whose Anchorman had a role for virtually everyone including Steve Carell who caught our attention in Bruce Almighty… alongside Jim Carrey.

As the new comedy clique got comfy together, gross-out pioneers the Farrellys continued to roll while others jumped on their bandwagon – most notably the American Pie brigade.

With the original cast gradually ducking out after three big-screen outings, the franchise continues to thrive in the straight-to-DVD market under the tenuous ‘American Pie Presents’ brand.

Strangely, and though their how-low-can-you-go legacy lives on, the Farrellys weaker movies - Shallow Hal and The Heartbreak Kid - have the strongest plots.

There is other evidence supporting the notion that successful comedy needs no narrative.

Parodies, by nature, are little more than sketch parades. But when they’re done well, the results can be hilarious: see Blazing Saddles, Airplane! and Top Secret for details.

No other genre, however, has been as horribly affected by the law of diminishing returns. These days, anything with the word 'movie' in the title should be avoided at all costs (as illustrated in our Spoofs round-up).

Yet going further back, the Marx Brothers delivered some of the funniest lines and visual gags in history, despite the fact that the plots of their movies were so thin that even they had to pad them out to an acceptable length with irrelevant musical interludes.

Unfortunately, most modern comedies go the other way, overstaying their welcome by stretching one-joke premises well past their expiry date. When Woody Allen was at his peak, his movies rarely lasted longer than 90 minutes.

But the “always leave them wanting more” rule no longer applies, usually because stars with an over-inflated conception of their own funniness refuse to let all that tiresome improvisation and llama-licking go to waste.

The problem is embodied by the Apatow machine which already seems to be faltering under the weight of its own output.

Following the success of 40 Year Old Virgin, Superbad and Knocked Up, Apatow was hailed as the new king of comedy. But his crown is slipping after barely a year, the quantity-over-quality approach resulting in lumbering recent efforts like Drillbit Taylor, Forgetting Sarah Marshall and Step Brothers.

His latest wheeze, Pineapple Express, has a plot of sorts (essentially Harold and Kumar do Midnight Run) but its stoner high-jinks and overly violent action never gel and, quelle surprise, it runs out of puff well before it ends.

The blame lies with television, and particularly American institution Saturday Night Live. Unfortunately, few of its alumni have mastered the comedic alchemy required to turn a good sketch into a successful movie.

Hollywood’s graveyard is full of SNL characters who died on the big screen – Stuart Saves His Family; Ferrell’s A Night At The Roxbury; the vaguely creepy oddity It’s Pat.

Mike Myers proved the exception with Wayne's World. But Eddie Murphy became the most consistently successful graduate (in his early career at least) by leaving his TV creations behind and bringing fresh characters to the movies.

Sure, his recent record is abysmal, but at least he churns out movies with a plot. Likewise, fellow SNL-er Carrey generally tried to give his characters somewhere to go, even before he started taking himself seriously. Ace Ventura had cases to solve and The Truman Show is high concept comedy at its best.

So though plot may not be necessary, it at least shows that the creators are capable of taking thought processes beyond the pitch and credit their audience with a modicum of intelligence.

It also gives the gags something to cling to, taking the audience on a quest with laughter rather than a desperate quest for laughs.

Gradually, we are being brought down by an endless parade of stoners, losers, slackers and complete idiots, their creators working under the assumption that someone, somewhere will laugh at what they are doing.

Of course, a sense of humour is like a fingerprint, so when it comes to comedy it is impossible to please all of the people all of the time. But unless the laughter-makers begin to make an effort, we’re all in danger of becoming dumb and dumber.

Elliot Noble