I was having a discussion with my brother last night, and it was actually extremely difficult for us to come up with a relatively recent comedy movie that either of us truly liked, or liked enough that we would watch it a second time. We decided to scroll through all of the comedies offered by Netflix and HBO GO, and after ~15 minutes of looking came up with only about a handful of available movies we would watch...4 of which we had already seen multiple times.
What do you think? Am I just living under a rock, or are all of these new comedy movies generally terrible? I fear we will never have another comedy great like Rodney Dangerfield making movies because of all of this PC nonsense that has been spreading like a plague.
I think that is probably the reason American comedy has gone down this road though. Because stand up is so popular, they try to exploit it by having long drawn out scenes that are lightly scripted and rely on the comedians to salvage it and make it funny. When that happens, there is no directing going on whatsoever.
There is another type of American comedy too that you could probably describe as a sketch movie. Basically all of Adam Sandler's films since 2000 fit this genre. Instead of doing improv, they write 20-30 sketches and link them together, which has the effect of each cut to another scene feeling like you're jumping into a different film altogether.
The thing both have in common is they're trying to get to the laugh as fast as possible without really considering all of the other factors that make a good full length comedy film.
It isn't just comedy either, I have noticed something similar happening in horror films. Consider The Shining and Paranormal Activity. From a directing standpoint, The Shining might be the best horror film ever made. In Paranormal Activity, they tried to take the extreme of horror films and make it the only focus (jumpscares). Jumpscares can be great after 15 minutes of story or character development and some half decent directing, but having it be the sole focus subtracts from the effect you want them to have.
American comedy and horror films feel cheap as fuck because they're trying to condense the best parts of better films in the genres. I think it's a money thing, and the worst part is that its probably working, because these films wouldn't be getting made if it wasn't.