I make a joke to help you forget how screwed you are.
Rowan Atkinson as the narcoleptic enrico polinni in Rat Race

A while back, we organized a few shelves of DVDs into categories that always stop visitors in their tracks – among the subheadings are brit flix, american comedies, black comedies (and we don’t mean film noir), stoopid comedies because they really are, classic comedies and so on. Our definition of cinematic humour has its own distinct set of parameters and every once in a while a new classification, like saturday morning comedy, is formed. This genre doesn’t actually have to be watched on that particular day of the week but it does require that one be of a certain tolerant, slightly soggy frame of mind that won’t quibble about sitting quite immobile for 90 minutes or so. Harmless, silly entertainment that elicits a good guffaw in all the right places is essential for cleaning out the cerebral pistons clogged up from a nasty week at the office. Not overly demanding in the way of connecting the metaphorical dots, it doesn’t even have to be all that good – as long as it is mindless in an appealing way, has at least one decent comic character uttering a line that can be reused in conversation when appropriate and doesn’t cost more than a month’s Netflix subscription. Watching this kind of movie together is a good way to find out whether we are still on the same absurd page for, as anyone who has everyone sat stifling a laugh knows, this fortnight’s Two Cents Tuesday Challenge theme – Funny – certainly means different things to each of us.

Last week, Across the Bored wondered “What is funny for you?” –  A silly hat or floppy cat, Carlin, Cheech and Chong or chonga, mindless memes, youtube yahoos or sweet baboos … We would love to see your vision.

For all those who are new readers to Across the Bored, some great entries and the guidelines for this fortnight’s challenge can be found here. Need more info or want to browse past themes? Have a look at HOW DOES THIS WORK.