Old people are not funny

Don't get me wrong, I love Don Rickles and Rodney Dangerfield. I don't mean old comedians.

I'm sick of tv and movies making a joke out of an elderly person acting like they're hip and young. Or giving an old character a sex drive and waiting for the hilarity to ensue. It's disrespectful, but that's not the problem. Offensive things can be funny. But there isn't any actual humor, the pure fact that an old person doing something they normally don't is expected to be funny. An old man wearing a beanie and saying "Dude!" wasn't funny the first time they did it, it certainly isn't now that it's been done to death.

The worst offender is Eugene Levy. Almost every movie role of his in the past 5-6 years had him trying to act hip as one of the big laughs in the commercials. American Pie, Bringing Down the House, and that Olsen twins movie.

Agree/Disagree?

those cell phone commercials are pretty bad. and also the dancing old guy for the six flags commercial. he scares me.

Old people scare me.

(that's Kenn Dodd widely regarded as one of the seminal brit comedians)



(Got funnier with age)





(see...that's funny)

So basically, no I dissagree.

thats one fat finger


oh..
and i also disagree

Hey, I totally think old people can be funny. Just saying an old actor hired to do something uncharacteristic of an old person is not a joke in and of itself

Howard Stern is like 50 and he's still funny, IMO.

I agree with you though, when movies/TV shows try to portray old people in a "cool" role, it's not very funny.

George Carlin, he's still fuckin hillairious.

Oh, ok...laughing at the fact someone is old ain't necessarily funny. But it could be!

I more hate when kids are cast and you can totally hear adult lines that they're reading to sound all clever and smart-ass. Adverts do it loads here.

The question is the exploitation of old people to sell products, like old people doing hip-hop for some burger place. I can’t stand it. If exploitation is used, I don’t buy whatever it is.

oooo i wish i still had the pretend commercial that this friend of mine made...

it's for a company that takes your old people, ties them to a raft, and sends them out in the arctic ocean to die cold and alone. it sounds horrible when i put it like that but it was really fucking funny...

and i don't actually want to put old people on rafts and send them out into the arctic ocean to die cold and alone. that's just not nice...

It is cool when an old person unexpectedly kicks ass, though. Like, I dunno if one of the other five people who saw Ghost Dog: Way of the Samurai remembers this, but there's a tiny scene where a young black guy tries to mug an old Vietnamese man carrying his groceries, and the old Vietnames guy kicks the shit out of him with such a fluid, well-studied motion that it's stuck with me.

one of the best standup acts i've ever seen was a elderly black man.
really respectable looking black guy in a big suit and everything, he acted out a infomercial on a cd of old "black music" like motown and soul that came with a booklet on how to learn to dance like a black man.
he must have been in his fifties but when the music started he just flowed into this dance routine that went through every major dance move that was typical for that old music all the while doing his tv shopping network talk about the cd.
it was hilarious seeing him flow through all those dance moves and he was smooooth doing it to, i wish i remembered his name.

another thing that i thought was pretty admirable is that he wasn't just the best performer on the show (the crowd when wild over him) he was also the only standup act in the entire season of that show that never resorted to swearing, racism, sexism, bigotry or any other negative kind of humour to try and be funny.
i don't see a whole lot of standup guys doing that either.

[Edited on Jun 30, 2004 by Snottlebocket]

So... you actually paid to see the Olsen twin's movie. huh.

That's a great movie. You'd think more people would have seen it.

i love that movie!

Ohhh. You have that ad too? It's positively disturbing.

How about the rapping grandma from the Wedding Singer?

NOT FUNNY

i hate old people & kids reading lines that they don't understand and would never really say. its so forced.
offenders: road trip, lake placid (betty white = not hip), american pie, anything that could be described as a "rapping grandma" & the dominatrix grandma from tomcats

He should have never been in Caddyshack 2. Actually that movie should have never been made.

Matthau kicks ass


Oh and I saw Ghost Dog too.

Louie: Jesus, Vinny. You just iced a woman, you know that?
Vinny: You know what you are, Louie? You're a fuckin' male chauvinist pig.
Louie: What do you mean, I'm a male chauvinist pig? You just shot a broad.
Vinny: A cop. I just shot a cop. They wanna be equal? I made her equal.

[Edited on Jun 30, 2004 by psychoholicagogo]

I'm old.


I'm not funny.


at all.

That's funny because when I read the first post in the thread I thought of the character in that flick who thinks he's Flavor Flav. I wonder what the other 4 people who saw it thought.

Ah, but Betty White has one of the best lines in movie history in Lake Placid:

"If I had a dick, this is where I would tell you to suck it."

No!! I was just referring to the commercials where it has him singing "Bad Boys" like Will Smith. Haven't seen Bringing Down the House, either.