Who needs a laugh?

The adults do. It's the adults.

I’ve been on a comedy kick since the release of The New York Times’ list of the best 100 movies of the 21st century. As I wrote a few weeks ago, one of my big takeaways from it was a mixture of relief and delight that comedies of all stripes got their due - that there were far more screwballs than superheroes being celebrated.

So, I reacquainted myself with The Royal Tenenbaums and Anchorman and I Love You, Man, and then, feeling like I was on a roll, went for something newer: You’re Cordially Invited, a direct-to-streamer from this year, starring Will Ferrell and Reese Witherspoon.

To be honest, You’re Cordially Invited didn’t deserve a stint in the theaters. It had its moments, but, cinematically, it is a far cry from some of the other films that put me on this path. There wasn’t a single relationship in the movie that was believable, and so those few funny moments didn’t amount to something where you were rooting for the main characters to figure everything out. No one seemed to have any clue what to do with Witherspoon either, which seems like a mortal sin.

All the same, the fact that a comedy with two enormous, seemingly bankable stars couldn’t sneak in a few weeks at the movie theater, especially in a dead zone like January or February, tells a story all by itself. The Oscars have never figured out what to do with this genre, but, in the era of streaming, that seems to extend to the entirety of the film industry.

Yet no matter what the spreadsheets say - and I’m pretty sure that is what is driving Hollywood almost exclusively at this point - it feels like there is a tidal wave of pent-up demand for adult-oriented comedies that is going unmet.

As shaky as You’re Cordially Invited was, I wrote a version of the same review I write any time a comedy like this shows up on some streaming service: this wasn’t that good, but I am so starved for laughs at the movie theater at this point, that I’ll take whatever I can get.