I'm Not Funny

Principal: Mr. Madison, what you've just said is one of the most insanely idiotic things I have ever heard. At no point in your rambling, incoherent response were you even close to anything that could be considered a rational thought. Everyone in this room is now dumber for having listened to it. I award you no points, and may God have mercy on your soul.

- from Billy Madison

I watched Billy Madison this week and I didn't like it. If this sounds like a confession, it's because it is.

Billy Madison is the 1995 Adam Sandler vehicle in which he goes back to grades 1-12 as a prereq for inheriting his family fortune. Along the way, he bonds with some ten-year olds, falls for his third-grade teacher, and has a few run-ins with fat people.

A lot of people think this movie is funny. ("Billy Madison is hilarious!", "Adam Sandler had a very funny role!", "This movie was hilarious!", "Adam Sandler and Bridgette Wilson did a funny and terrific job", "This movie is one of the best comedys", "The movie is pretty funny, and very enjoyable.") I'm not one of those people. Of course the movie is childish, but I also thought it was half-assed, poorly-constructed, an overgrown sketch rather than a scripted feature film.

But now I'm wondering if the real reason I didn't like the movie is that I'm not funny. It seems pretty universally accepted that Adam Sandler is funny, which means, by deduction, I'm not funny.

I like Adam Sandler. I do. I enjoyed him in Punch Drunk Love, had a good time with him in 50 First Dates and look forward to watching Spanglish (uh, on DVD, anyway…). But Punch Drunk Love is hardly a comedy, and the others, romances, aren't really in the Billy Madison genre either.

I think about other movies I've watched recently; I think about my recent praise for Jim Carrey in Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (not a comedy), how I fairly admired him in Man on the Moon (not a comedy), and I find him generally unwatchable (Bruce Almighty, Ace Ventura—comedies). Maybe it's not Jim Carrey; maybe it's that I'm not funny.

The last joke book I read was by Sigmund Freud. That was a hoot. I also yucked my way through Bergson's On Laughter. Ha ha. And if this paragraph is supposed to be funny, well, at least I'm proving my point.

I do like things that are clever. I like sarcastic. I feel kinship with Barthes when he says, "I claim to live to the full the contradiction of my time, which may well make sarcasm the condition of truth." But Barthes isn't funny.

I like wry. Wry is good. But wry isn't funny. Wry is whiskey, wry is bread.

Even that wasn't funny. Damnit. And I'm here all night.