The most badly aged comedy in cinema history, according to science
Any British sitcom from the 1970s will tell you that comedy is much more susceptible to the ageing process than other genres of entertainment. Perhaps as a result of comedy’s ability to reflect and satirise current attitudes and events, it is easy to look back on comedy shows and films from ten, 20, or 30 years ago and judge them for their dated content. Still, some offenders are much worse than others, and science has the data to back those claims up.
There are countless iconic comedy films that seem to transcend generations and still find favour with audiences to this day. From the slapstick hilarity of Peter Sellers’ Pink Panther series to the ever-enduring genius of Monty Python’s Life of Brian, there is a whole host of evidence for the fact that comedy does not inherently become less effective as it ages. However, there is also a lot of evidence to suggest that bad comedy becomes much worse when dealing with the effects of ageing.
We could gladly list all the comedies that haven’t aged particularly well in our eyes but, not wishing to enter into a conversation which includes the word ‘woke’ or ‘snowflake’, it might be easier to let science do the talking. Recently, Stat Significant collected a wealth of data from MovieLens in order to categorically denote which films have aged most badly over the past 30 years.
Essentially, reviews given to films on MovieLens were examined over time, and those with the biggest disparity between initial reviews and modern reviews were deemed to have aged the worst, as audiences have become less receptive to them. Topping the list, as expected, is The Birth of a Nation – an infamous film which glamourised the Ku Klux Klan and reaffirmed racist stereotypes of Black Americans, inspiring a dangerous resurgence of the KKK during the 1910s and 1920s.
Disney’s misguided take on race relations, Song of the South, follows, but the third entry on the list marks the first comedy to appear on the rankings. While it is difficult to think of any comedy film which might have aged as poorly, or done as much damage as The Birth of a Nation, who are we to disagree with quantitative data? With ratings dropping a whopping 19.3% between 1995 and 2023, The Nutty Professor is the most badly aged comedy of the past 30 years, according to the data.
Admittedly, The Nutty Professor wasn’t a revolutionary film to begin with, but it did garner decent reviews from critics upon release and was a hit at the box office. A remake of Jerry Lewis’ Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde parody, the film sees Eddie Murphy play a university professor who develops a weight-loss pharmaceutical which inexplicably transforms him into an evil alter-ego named Buddy Love.
If that description of the plot was not clear enough: this was not Murphy’s finest comedy moment, although the sheer volume of different characters he performs in the film is undeniably impressive.
Aside from various jokes about fat people and the overt sexism of Buddy Love, there is nothing in the film which is too overtly offensive – certainly nothing on the same level as Song of the South. It seems, therefore, that the rapidly declining reviews of the film are simply due to a shift in comedic sensibilities among younger audience members. Viewers in 1996 might have been rolling around in the aisles as Eddie Murphy in a fat suit, but comedic attitudes move on, and that’s probably for the best.
