21st century comedy

    A couple of years ago I was on Netflix and I asked my friends on Democratic Underground to recommend some comedies. They did and I put them in my queue. Then I became fed up with Netflix and suspended my account. Fast forward to the present, or nearly. A few weeks ago, I got an offer from Netflix of a free month, presumably for having been POed enough to keep my account suspended for two years. So I took them up on it, and my long-ago recommended comedies started coming in the mail. Boy!
    "Little Miss Sunshine" is a little bundle of joy. About loneliness, desperation, suicidal depression, heroin, the pointlessness of all hope and aspiration and the uselessness of being America's leading Proust scholar, it is indeed a ray of sunshine only equal to that shed by Miss Anita Bryant all those years ago. At least it ends cheerfully, so there's that.
    "Happiness" is probably in fact a late 20th century movie, but I don't feel like looking it up. It's about all the same things except for heroin and Proust, but with child rape added. It is actually marketed as a comedy-drama. I'm not sure that "funny-peculiar" really qualifies something as comedy, but there you are. The best I can say about it is that I keep thinking of Ms. Jane Adams as Joy, so I guess that means that her performance conveyed something. Mainly I'm just glad there isn't a shotgun in this house, or I might not be here to be typing this.
    The "Badder Santa" edition of "Bad Santa" didn't exactly inspire me to want to watch the less bad edition, so I can't say what the difference is. I'm wild-guessing that the original may have slightly less potty-mouthed. This was just a tiresome example of stringing together a lot of cusswords in place of, I don't know, jokes. Ms. Lauren Graham was largely wasted in a cartoonish part, while Mr. Billy Bob Thornton used his considerable charm to turn a total wart into-- almost a total wart.
    What do we conclude? Asking the lovely people of the Lounge at Democratic Underground for comedy recommendations might not be the best idea. Or we might conclude that I am still powered by bitterness and envy. After all, I should be writing screenplays in Hollywood! Or we might conclude that I like pretty women with dark hair. But I think we knew that already. Tonight: Bowfinger. If Eddie Murphy is a Proust scholar, I'm sending the damned thing right back.:)