Many species of humour

Gross-Out


Gross-Out comedy also known as toilet humour is any visual joke involving sex, farts, belches and other disgusting things. Some of this type of humour first showcased in the 70's especially National Lampoon's Animal House (1979) which had Bluto (John Belushi's character) start a food fight by impersonating a zit using a mashed potato. In the 80's movies like Porkies had this, and most notably the famous chocolate bar in the swimming pool scene in Caddyshack. It is also done in several 90's/2000's comedies even though it is overdone especially in any movie that Seltzer and Friedberg make. Although one great use of gross-out humour is the infamous Mr Creote scene from Monty Python's Meaning Of Life.



Slapstick

Slapstick also known as phsyical comedy has been around since the early 30's. Almost every comic known to mankind has done this from The Three Stooges to Robin Williams. And it never gets tiresome. Jim Carrey is a master of this as demonstrated in his movies like Ace Ventura and Dumb and Dumber. Chris Farley often used his weight as an advantage for comic effect in many of his SNL skits and in movies like Tommy Boy and Beverly Hills Ninja.



Observation comedy

Observation comedy is where the comedian takes notes of all the funny things he/she sees and makes a humourous observation about it. There are lot of comics that do this sort of thing including late night talk show hosts like Letterman and Jay Leno. Jay Leno often does this when he does his stand up routines.



Relationship comedy

This is where the comic talks about how difficult relationships can be in a funny fashion and sometimes even mentions their own difficult lovelife.



Self depreciation

Self depreciation humour is where the comic makes jokes about how terrible their life is and how they don't get any reconisiton for their work. The most famous example of a comic who has done this is Rodney Dangerfield - whose catchprase was often "I get no respect, no respect at all." Self depreciation humour is often very underated.



Black comedy

Black comedy is comedy with a dark sinister twist to it. The humour is often dark and more than a little twisted but the result makes it more entertaining. Most notable examples of this including the 1996 film The Cable Guy starring Jim Carrey as a cable repairman with a sinister lisp (which for some reason is never explained) and a weird habit of stalking his customers. Another example is the highly underated 1990s comedy Nothing But Trouble starring Chevy Chase, Dan Akyroyd (in two roles, he also directs it), Demi Moore and John Candy (also in two roles).



Spoof

The spoof or parody is the art of making fun of other movies and tv shows, although it's not only used in movies and tv it is also used in music as well especially by Dr Demento and Weird Al Yankovich. Music parody website amiright (which btw I used to a regular on, it was a pretty good sight too) is famous for this. Mel Brooks specialises in spoof movies especially Spaceballs (a parody of sci fi films), Young Frankenstein (a parody of monster movies) and Blazing Saddles (a spoof of Western movies). In 2007 Disney did a spoof of their own movies titled Enchanted which was about an animated princess who ends up in the real world. The Scary Movie series mainly used to focus on making fun of slasher movies like I Know What You Did Last Summer but later on began to spoof almost every hit movie or tv show of that particular year - unfortunately they also made fun of Michael Jackson two times - once in Scary Movie 3 and once again in Scary Movie 4 (there's even a deleted scene which shows MJ who is played by impersonator Edward Moss, getting zapped by an alien spaceship numerous times, the first time he gets zapped he gets zapped back into his Bad incarnation, the second time he gets zapped back into his Thriller incarnation and the third time he gets zapped into what he might have looked like if he hadn't had plastic surgery).



Puns

The pun always known as wordplay or paraphelia is the most sophisicated form of humour. Now it can be used in a number of ways. It can be used in sentences as well. Freddy Krueger started making puns and wisecracks in the third Nightmare On Elm Street film and used them since then. Tales From The Crypt often featured a host who used puns all the time , his name was the Crypt Keeper and his voice was done by John Kassir. The Misadventures Of Flapjack has an episode all about puns titled Pun Times with Punsie Mchale.