‘Funny Business,’ Sad comedy scene

Funny Business, writer and ScreenCrush editor Matt Singer’s new book about “The Old-School Wedding Crashers and Knocked-Up Virgins Who Changed Comedy Forever,” is a funny, propulsive, well-reported look at the so-called “Frat Pack” of the early 2000s to early 2010s who pioneered a new style of improv-based raunch. It’s also, if you’re a comedy film fan, one of the saddest books you’ll read this year.

It’s no secret that comedy isn’t a box office draw anymore. Most people get their laughs these days from shortform videos on TikTok or YouTube, comedy series on streamers or subscription services like Dropout or Smosh. There are seemingly a dozen standup comedy specials that hit streaming services every week, but traditional studio comedies have nearly gone extinct. The idea of a hit as big as “The Hangover” happening now is as wild as the drunken antics of that film’s protagonists.

Funny Business: The Old-School Wedding Crashers and Knocked-Up Virgins Who Changed Comedy Forever
By Matt Singer
G.P. Putnam’s Sons; 336 pages

And Singer knows that. He concludes his examination of the Frat Pack comedy scene — primarily focusing on Will Ferrell, Ben Stiller, Owen Wilson, Vince Vaughn, Steve Carrell, Seth Rogen, Judd Apatow, Adam McKay, Todd Phillips and Paul Feig — by acknowledging the bubble bursting on those types of comedies gave way to the Netflixification of comedy films. But before he gets there, Singer walks the reader through the history of the Frat Pack, tracing its origins to National Lampoon and Animal House through Saturday Night Live to Apatow and McKay flicks.

From fraternities to ‘Frat Pack’

Singer’s writing style is punchy and informative and often peppered with his own jokes. Fans of his film criticism at ScreenCrush or in his Siskel & Ebert book Opposable Thumbs will find a lot to like in Funny Business. One doesn’t have to be a fan of movies like Talladega Nights or The 40-Year-Old Virgin to appreciate the deep dive of the era Singer goes through here, using new interviews combined with older research. Each chapter could be read as its own stand-alone story; if you wanted to read all about the making of Anchorman but skip how Knocked Up was conceived, you won’t miss much, but the stingers at the end of each section will make you want to keep reading. Drawing the lineage of Animal House to There’s Something About Mary, the first chapter ends like this:

“Animal House and its spiritual successors in the ‘slobs versus snobs’ comedy subgenre made a huge impact on a generation of kids who saw those movies at a young age… Two of those kids were a pair of siblings from Cumberland, Rhode Island, who later recounted the seismic impact Animal House had on their lives when it first hit theaters.”

“‘Animal House is a tremendous landmark,’ said one of the brothers in 1998. ‘I remember seeing it as a kid and wondering, ‘Isn’t that illegal? Can they do that in movies?’ The other brother cited Animal House as the main film that spurred them to become a directing team. When they did, they created one of the few R-rated comedies in history to outgross — and out-gross — their inspiration. Their names were Peter and Bobby Farrelly.”

The rest of the book draws connections in the same fashion. Apatow and Stiller met in line for an Elvis Costello show in 1991, laying the groundwork for Stiller’s comedy career, which would have a ripple effect for Owen Wilson and Vince Vaughn, and so on and so forth. By the time a 2004 USA TODAY article detailing a visit to the set of Wedding Crashers dubbed the crew the “Frat Pack,” a new comedy moment was born. Singer weaves in and out of each major project the Frat Pack worked on, from the Ben Stiller Show through This Is The End.

The state of the R-rated comedy

And in doing so, Funny Business really makes you mourn for a time when a theatrical comedy could make an impact with an audience. The book works as a history of the R-rated 2000s and as an examination of the comedy scene right now. The biggest comedy of this year by box office is the latest Scary Movie. After that, the highest-performing original comedy is The Invite — an R-rated marital drama starring Seth Rogen, best known now for the streaming comedy series The Studio.

But Singer ends with a hopeful tone, noting that R-rated comedies died out once before after Animal House imitators saturated the market, and they came back again, and maybe someone inspired by the Frat Pack will soon come along to distract us from our worries for a few hours.

“[These movies] may not be perfect. They may not age well. (Admittedly, some didn’t age well within days of their release.) But when they work, they drag us away from whatever else is bothering us and invite us along to crash the party with them,” he writes in the final chapter of Funny Business.

I sure hope he’s right.