That cringing new acting trend in recent American comedies. Why??

Hi everyone!

I'm new here but I have a question for you guys that may sound trivial but which is really bothering me about American comedy movies, especially the new ones.

So, I'm born and raised in Europe and still live there, but i LOVE to watch movies in their original language and hate dubbed movies and such. I watch a lot of movies, so unfortunately often bad ones, sometimes excellent ones.
I like every genre, from arty farty stuff to blockbuster types.
I just take a movie for what it is and don't compare comedies or cash grossing flicks with state of the art Cannes Film Festival movies

However, I noticed something really annoying, like a new trend in some comedies settled in the USA:
Actors often have this super irritating way of speaking fast, very fast, with almost high pitched voices, and while overacting ANY emotion and just acting.... dumb, to say the least, the WHOLE duration of the movie. They never stop. They never rest. They never look serious or mentally older than 15.

The last example was yesterday evening, while watching "Game Night". Not the brightest comedy ever made, i know (it's pretty unremarkable) but that acting.... oh god.
It made my toes curl so hard I could feel my nails scratching the wooden floor... What the hell is that?
I had noticed this trend earlier while watching, among others, the (very bad imho) remake of Ghostbusters. I would have slapped every actor/actress in the face. It's like no one can say a simple sentence normally. The dialogues are wayyyyyyy too fast, it's almost like the actors don't breathe.
And the thing is, it kills all credibility instantly. It just makes everything sound so silly and you can't take it seriously for one second.Just because we want to watch a comedy doesn't mean we are stupid and need to see idiotic people overacting while desperately trying to be funny.We're not 7 years old anymore.
I know these kind of comedies are really not aimed to the intellectual part of my brain but you know, sometimes, when the day has been long and hard, it's good to get entertained.

And American movie directors can make the best comedies in the world (I loved Superbad, Sideways and the likes), but this is just like watching an episode of the Rescue Rangers... I don't get the point of that way of acting.

So can anyone explain to me: is this just a trend? who started it? who thought it was funny? Do some americans really speak like this when they want to be funny?
Or is it more of a cultural thing which I am not aware as a European, like, something that originated in some late show kind-of-stuff or such?
I'd be very grateful if someone could explain this to me, maybe I am lacking some insight here!
If you don't understand what I am talking about, watch any part of these movies and you'll get it.
Thx everyone!

Well, as you've already pointed out, these movies are garbage... so, to fix the fact that they're written so badly, and directed so terribly, the actors are basically instructed to talk as fast as possible in high-pitched voices, and have wide-eyed shocked expressions, simply to give a frenetic energy to the scene to mask that what you're watching isn't actually exciting or funny.

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Good questions. Having just had a rewatch of The Hangover I was thinking the same thing.

Yes, the Hangover is also one of these movies.
If you take it like it is, it's really not bad at all. But the acting litterally destroys 80% of the movie's appeal.
But I chose those 2 examples because, in my opinion, they are THE best examples of this horrible trend.
Of course, when I load "Game Night" or "Ghostbusters- the remake" I know there's a 90% chance that they will be crap. But I'm too curious, I have to see it for myself and make my own opinion. I often feel like I lost plenty of hours of my life but so be it.
I was just wondering who started this trend? Was it one director, or one actor who is being copied or is it, like the Rodent says, really a standard Hollywood technique for camouflaging bad writing (very relevant remark, thx by the way)?
Do some people take these theatrical attitudes when they make humor in the USA or is it weird to you also?

I'd honestly think that Superbad fits your description, though. Perhaps it's better, but still pulling the same stuff nonetheless.

I think one possible explanation is how a major trend (as pointed out by Tony Zhou in his Every Frame A Painting video on Edgar Wright's comedy) is the emphasis on allowing actors (who, it is worth noting, most likely have backgrounds in live comedy scenarios such as stand-up or improv anyway) to improvise jokes and deliveries at length and then piecing together the best lines while editing the final film because the aim is to pack as many good jokes into the film as possible. While that makes sense on the surface, the problem is that it's easy for scenes or even entire films to become disjointed and repetitive as a result. For example, a frequent trend I've noticed is when characters will insult one another by saying "you look like..." followed by obviously-improvised material, sometimes stopping the film dead just to have characters riff on each other. I think you can trace the rise of this particular trend back to Judd Apatow and his role in creating films like Anchorman, The 40-Year-Old Virgin, and Knocked Up that embodied it so well.

I was just going to reference Every Frame A Painting, he pinpoints, what I think, is the answer you're looking for.

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This is really good
The thing I'm talking about is indeed to be explained by this: lack of filming originality, so add up some more loads of blahblah and "try" to sound funny.
But what I mostly will remember is this: British comedies are better than American ones no offense

There was something I thought of a few years ago when I saw one of those videos of sitcoms when they had removed the canned laughter.


It dawned on me that if something is either funny, or funnier, with a laugh track, then the original material simply isn't funny.
If watching a comedy, movie or TV, imagine a laugh track on it. If it seems that it would be funnier with a track, then the movie itself isn't actually that good.

There are numerous sitcoms on youtube with the laugh track removed. The Big Bang Theory for example. So awkward. People sitting there in silence, it doesn't ring true and it takes away time for more jokes or story.

I was going to say Judd Apatow. The whole rapid fire dialog shtick definitely seems like his doing earlier on. It's gotten progressively worse, too, imo. I feel for people affected by this, haha.

Then again, John Hughes used lightning fast dialog close-ups to much better effect in Uncle Buck, Weird Science. I think letting the improv scenes take over is always a bad idea. It's like you're watchign b roll outtakes and the editor is saying to themselves, "one of these takes is gonna make ya laugh, let me just stuff it right up your ass for ya there, stupid."

Edgar Wright has the potential to be a bonafide genius, and he has been more than once.

Many people make that argument, but I don't know if it's really fair. They pace scenes that way so the laugh track will fit. If they didn't have a laugh track there wouldn't be many awkward pauses.

Nevertheless, I've seen some of those videos, and the ones where the awkwardness is part of the comedy, the weird pauses kinda fit. I don't even like Friends that much, but found this clip pretty funny:

It works for a character like Ross. Not for a character like Leonard from Big Bang.

I understand why they do it, but you'll notice the trend in comedy tv shows now skews towards the lack of a laugh track (The Office, Modern Family, Brooklyn Nine-Nine). Very few shows have a laugh track now, especially because it feels forced. The new Roseanne for example has some bad laugh tracks.

Off the top of my head; Roseanne, Will & Grace, Big Bang Theory. I'm sure there are more, but I can't think of any.

If a show has a laugh track or doesn't have one often doesn't matter to me. I laugh when I think the joke is funny, and sometimes the laugh track even misses a perfectly witty line. There are some laugh tracks which get obnoxious though, like the one for Friends. And if I don't find the jokes funny, then yeah a laugh track trying to convince me they are is pretty annoying.
If Laverne & Shirley didn't have a laugh track I would laugh just as much, since Cindy Williams and Penny Marshall are brilliant comic talents.

Hi. What do you think of the Marx Bros., Bringing Up Baby and other Hawks comedies, John Huston and Billy Wilder flicks full of fast-paced dialogue? I've seen all the films mentioned and I'm reading this thread and it mostly makes no sense to me.

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I really liked the Apatow style when it was new. It was refreshingly authentic. I guess I'd agree it's a little stale now, but only relative to how it felt at first. I still often prefer it to the standard setup-punchline formula.

I mean, sure, most ordinary conversations don't have that kind of stuff in them, but ordinary conversations don't have the rhythms of more "standard" comedies, either. It's all contrived, and I don't find the traditional style (or the British style, inasmuch as there is one) any less contrived than the more collaborative/improvisational approach.

Really natural, circumstantial comedy is pretty rare, because it involves a lot of downtime building up characters and letting situations unfold slowly. I think this has always been in short supply, though.

Thanks all for your contributions I'm learning plenty of stuff I wasn't thinking of.
I've a video that shows exactly what I mean when I tell you guys about the fast dialogue and the tone which is overwhelmingly silly and totally annoying.
I'm so sorry you'll have to endure watching it.
It really makes my body hair stand up from terror, irritation, unease, and makes me want to howl like a mad dog.
In others words, probably the worst scenes in this genre of dialogue writing, script etc.
How can anyone making the movie at any stage think "yeah that's the ticket" and throw no objection? It's still a riddle to me.
It makes everything so bloody stupid and even if the movie is bad already, this just makes it even worse. When I read cinema critics like "the movie is bad, but the acting saves it" I almost choke in my morning biscuit.
This way of acting is worse than Bollywood drama-acting...
I can't post any link, because I'm new here, but go to Youtube and type "Ghostbusters funny moments -Ending (HD)"
Good luck surviving this and all apologies.

Hard to be called a "Comedy" when it lacks of humor


I also agree with the really dumb, awkward cliched .... whatever you wanna call it.. Lots of that weird sarcastic mumbling under the breath which is supposed to be cute, too... It's all annoying!

One thing I've always questioned is what's with the canned laughter in sitcoms?Even as a kid I asked if viewers need to be told when to laugh. I'm sure it happens in my country as well, and as indicated, it's not new.

I think the theory about films featuring stand-up comics (or inspired by stand-up comedy) is correct. In some films characters speak in monologues. Eddie Murphy may have been one of the first in that trend. I don't recall it happening much with comics like Richard Pryor or Bill Cosby in their films. It can be done well but it also can be overdone.