Analyze This

Over at Deadline Hollywood there's a piece on how film comedies have been failing lately.  So far this summer, for instance, Snatched, Baywatch, Rough Night and now The House have flopped.

And how do they analyze this?

The real problem is the flooding of the marketplace with Bacchanlia [sic] comedies, and The House is opening two weekends after Sony's raunchy female comedy bomb, Rough Night.  Party hardy comedies have been tapped way too many times by the majors following the success of Todd Phillip's The Hangover trilogy and Seth Rogen-Evan Goldberg's produced This Is The End ($126M global) and Neighbors (270.7M global).  Audiences can smell these type of films from several miles away and their [sic] sending a clear message with their wallets that they're flat our rejecting them asarquee choices.

This sort of after-the-fact analysis is nonsense.  Some films have flopped so there's a search for a trend to explain it.  But it's not about a trend, and it's not about scheduling.

Raunchy comedies have been around for decades, and will continue to be around.  If they connect with an audience, they make money.  If they're no good, they flop.  It's just about that simple.

Look at the reader ratings on the IMDb.  The Hangover is a modern classic in R-rated comedy, and it gets a 7.8 rating. (As noted, it didn't create the genre, it just did a great job within it.) Meanwhile, Rough Night gets a 5.5 while The House gets a 5.7.

People were waiting for a good comedy teaming Will Ferrell and Amy Poehler.  They didn't get one.  If the market hadn't been flooded, it still would have flopped.  And if the film delivered, it wouldn't have mattered if a hit comedy was released a few weeks earlier.