When the Powers of Comedy Just Won’t Behave

We try, in this space, to keep things “serious.” We keep up with the “issues.” We’re “concerned.” Sometimes, to show sincerity, we even furrow our headlines, especially when discussing backyard matters such as the “film” industry and its effect on “the children.” We try reallyreally hard to hew to the new political trend of always preceding the word “outrage” with “moral.”

And sometimes, when it “all comes together” we’re rewarded with a story that “really shows what it’s all about.”

This isn’t that story, baby.

This is about “continuous comic, phallic, sexual innuendo, gross toilet humor, occasional profanity, head-banging, crotch-biting fights, jokes about dwarfs and lesbians and strategic semi-nudity.” Or that’s how the film guide in this newspaper described it, adding “concerned parents should preview.”

Yeahhh, baby, yeahhh. While half of America has spent the week furrowing its headlines over the film industry and what it’s doing to children, the other half seems to have flocked to “Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me,” the second summer movie to break box office records so far this spring. The gross last weekend was $54.7 million, which set a couple of records, and not just for movies that forgot to have AK-47s or guys named Jar-Jar. If this were a “serious issue,” this next part would be where I’d say something furrowed if I could just get the words, “Ow, behave” out of my mind.

But I can’t. This is what happens when you spend too much time furrowing. Your brain goes Botox. You lose capacity.

One day, you’re full of serious thoughts about the yearning for lighter hearts and better screenwriting. And the next, your pinky is stuck in the corner of your mouth, your boss keeps morphing into a fat Scot shouting “Doontcha think Ah’m saixy?” and you have this irresistible urge to refer to your kids as “Mini Me.”

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Fortunately, as will happen with any event involving great wads of money, summer-movie seasons come with a certain amount of deep thought built in. When the Austin Powers movie--which is actually a sequel to a 1997 near-flop-turned-cult-movie--knocked the “Star Wars” sequel out of the top spot at the box office this week, one deep-thinking movie exec chalked its success up to “a hunger for comedy.”

Well, OK. Cynical minds might also wonder about marketing mojos, but whatever. Between Monicagate and Littleton and World War II 1/2 in the Balkans, good laughs have been hard to find. Though there are some who, believe it or not, think good laughs have been hard to find in “The Spy Who Shagged Me.” Larry Gelbart, the veteran comedy writer (“Tootsie,” the TV version of “MASH,” NBC’s classic “Caesar’s Hour”), says he walked out after six minutes.

“If that’s gonna be the standard, then I’m glad I’m not starting in this business next Tuesday,” says Gelbart. “This notion that you have to out-gross the grossness of the last hit is very disturbing. I can only speak about the first six minutes, but it wasn’t my cup of tea.”

Not that the movie execs feeding the “hunger for comedy” care much about what cup of tea a 71-year-old comedy legend might like--and therein lies one of the summer movie season’s few serious notes. Say what you will about what the film industry is doing to today’s kids; Austin Powers is about what today’s kids have done to films.

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Whether you think this is a tragedy or a breath of fresh, joyful air is a function of your own comedy quotient. Here, the purveyor of serious issues would probably express moral outrage. Unfortunately, the purveyors we are and the purveyors we ought to be are a little like Austin Powers and his nemesis, Dr. Evil--slightly different: As the parent of children, this purveyor spends most of her waking hours hip-deep in continuous comic, phallic, sexual innuendo, gross toilet humor, occasional profanity, head-banging, crotch-biting fights, jokes about dwarfs. . . . The sorry truth is, I laughed myself sick.

Which may say more about living with the focus group of the moment than it does about the “issues.” Still, the nice thing about this particular focus group is that, gross-outs aside, it appreciates the value of sheer silliness. To be light is a gift. Comedy is hard to pull off, violence is sickeningly easy. That’s why there is never enough laughter, and always too much seriousness.

Meanwhile, the launch of summer-movie madness means the end of school and the season of sweet vacation. Time for a breath of fresh, joyful air. Your shag-a-delic purveyor will meet you back in this space in about a week. Until then, behave, baby. Yeahhh.

Shawn Hubler’s column runs Mondays and Thursdays. Her e-mail address is shawn.hubler@latimes.com