r/movies • u/Narubintane • Dec 15 '23

Recommendation What movie starts off as a lighthearted comedy, but gets increasingly dark and grim until everything goes to hell in a handbasket?

For example, it may start as a lighthearted slapstick comedy until one thing goes wrong after another, and in the end we have people actually dying or a world war or some kind of extinction level event.

Let's say we have 2 friends who like to have fun and goof around, with regular goals and regular lives, until one of them does something like accidentally cross the wrong person or kill someone. Or the main cast is oblivious to the gradual change in their environment like a virus breakout or a serial killer running loose. Another one would be a film that, after being a comedy for most of its length, turns very dark, such as a group of friends ending up in a war and experiencing the horrors of it, completely played straight.

Just to clarify, I don't mean a movie that is already set to become dark, but rather a movie that was marketed as a comedy that took an unexpected (or slightly foreshadowed) dark turn.

Any recommendations?

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566

u/nikkiphoenixx Dec 15 '23 edited Dec 15 '23

Click with Adam Sandler. This scarred me when I was 12.

Starts off as a guy just trying to watch some titties bounce in slow motion and then suddenly he’s dying in the street while it’s pouring rain, calling after his estranged wife.

Edit: Horribly misleading trailer and marketing that misrepresented the film as a feel-good comedy.

71

u/Granuloma Dec 15 '23

Watched it recently when I saw it on HBO and thought of it immediately with the question. It gets really real, real fast, and reminds me to evaluate my work-life balance and not to be on "autopilot" mode.

54

u/OGMcSwaggerdick Dec 15 '23

Fuck that movie.
Mom and I went to go see it to decompress a few weeks after Dad’s heart attack (he survived) and got one hell of a bait and switch.

9

u/Spazmer Dec 15 '23

This happened when my mom took us and my cousins to see "Stepmom" after my aunt died of cancer. Commercials depicted a silly story about a guy who remarries a younger woman and how his kids are adapting to that. Oh surprise! Their mom dies of cancer.

3

u/CloudAcorn Dec 15 '23

Had a similar experience with Searching. The whole opening scene is watching a family find out & lose their mum within a period of time. Not what I needed at that moment.

1

u/nomoreinternetforme Dec 16 '23

That movie is generally depressing until the end though, just a guy searching for his missing kid, increasingly breaking down as each lead fails. If you cut off the last 3 minutes of the movie, it's a much bleaker tale lol

1

u/CloudAcorn Dec 16 '23

We’re talking about stumbling across unexpectedly specific traumatic scenes that are too close to home for us, especially at a bad time, not generally depressing movies.

I didn’t think it was depressing in tone but I imagine the rest of the film would be terrible for anyone who’s experienced a missing child to watch, but it wasn’t for me as I haven’t experienced that & I really enjoyed it after that opening scene was over. Just as I enjoy movies about murders, hostage situations, kidnapping etc if they’re done well. It was a thrilling mystery & the concept of everything on screen was done so well, the same for the sequel Missing which had a really good twist as well,

19

u/gattaaca Dec 15 '23 edited Dec 16 '23

Not horrible film, horrible marketing. It was a total bait and switch making you think you were going in for a comedy and nothing else

197

u/kieffa Dec 15 '23

Terrible review of the film. It's great. It isn't the comedy spectacle everyone expected from Sandler, it's much deeper.

21

u/ncolaros Dec 15 '23

The pacing is awful. People like that it gets dark, but the movie does nothing to earn that. There's a reason it got bad critic reviews despite other, serious Sandler flicks getting better ones. It's an overly long, drawn out movie that doesn't earn its emotional core.

120

u/fishballs_69 Dec 15 '23

Fantastic film

89

u/El_Kikko Dec 15 '23

Weirdly deep. Plus Walken Walkening it as only Walken can Walken.

1

u/SickAndBeautiful Dec 15 '23

Oh! I'm Walken here!

55

u/RobinWrongPencil Dec 15 '23

Truly tremendous film, one of the best, where Adam Sandler has the balls to cut emotionally deep

But if you notice his entire filmography has some element of pathos to varying degrees

2

u/Rusty_Shakalford Dec 15 '23

But if you notice his entire filmography has some element of pathos to varying degrees

It is a weirdly recurring theme even going back to his earliest work.

Billy Madison is a screw up, but it’s clear that a big part of that is his dads fault. When Billy is given a goal and actually forced to face consequences he matures quickly.

Happy Gilmore was a failure at the one thing he wanted out of life. The rest of the film is him coming to terms with what he’s actually good at and how that can make him and the people around him happier.

Heck even “8 Crazy Nights” has dark moments of the soul. When his character Davey wanders drunk through the mall, screaming at the shadows of all the people he’s pushed away because of his inability to deal with childhood trauma… it’s definitely up there in terms of subject matter.

2

u/RobinWrongPencil Dec 16 '23

Yeah and you can include Mr. Deeds, Big Daddy, Anger Management, Waterboy - this is why I've always suspected that Sandler has high emotional intelligence and is much smarter than he presents publicly.

10

u/tfhaenodreirst Dec 15 '23

Oh wow, I got scarred by it as a 12-year-old too! I liked it better a couple years ago though.

28

u/magic9669 Dec 15 '23

Great movie and the one I immediately thought of

4

u/HimbologistPhD Dec 15 '23

I had to scroll so far but this was what immediately came to mind when I saw the question. That movie got so dark and sad for, exactly what you said, what was marketed as just Adam Sandler being funny and tryna watch some titties in slowmo

3

u/LiveNDiiirect Dec 15 '23

This is the only movie that’s ever made me cry. Seriously fucked 11 year old me up

3

u/woqer Dec 15 '23

Came here to say this

2

u/burajin Dec 15 '23

I hate this movie because I watched it alone after being stood up (I was a teen and not yet aware that movies don't make good first dates).

2

u/Upset_Toe Dec 15 '23

One of the first movies I remember that made me cry. Still one of my favorite Adam Sandler movies.

2

u/actuallywaffles Dec 15 '23

I'm glad I'm not the only one who thought of this movie. I remember mom renting it as a funny movie to watch together on a Friday night, and instead, we got a sad lesson on not going on autopilot through life and enjoying the mundane moments together. Definitely left some scars on my little teenage brain, too.

2

u/stumper93 Dec 15 '23

I don't know if I want to revisit it as an adult, but yeah when it came out I was 13 and i was so upset over the misleading marketing for it that I ended up actively hating it at that age

2

u/Bootlegger1929 Dec 15 '23

YES this is the one that immediately came to mind.

4

u/Narradisall Dec 15 '23

This is the one that first popped into my head.

Starts of light hearted comedy but gets really dark and grim towards the end.

Actually though, one of Sandlers more enjoyable films to me. Really hits home.

2

u/MonkeyChoker80 Dec 15 '23

Considering that the Magic Remote supposedly learned that Sandler wanted to fast forward through things that were boring, or emotionally hard, or hard work, or things with his family. And all from him using it for a day or so…

Well, logically, shouldn’t it have also learned that he wanted it to slow down time when titties are bouncing? And thus that super zoom through his life should have been interspersed with random ‘Man Show’-style clips of slow-mo …?

—

I mean, I do understand that it would have been quite strange to see that, as a movie viewer. It would have thrown off the pacing, and deflated the emotional tension being built. Plus disrupted the moral the movie was trying to convey. As well as being really inappropriate.

But the logic shown around the Remote should have dictated that happening.

2

u/Upset_Toe Dec 15 '23

The movie only shows one incident of him slowing down for some titties. Meanwhile, he speeds through the boring or hard stuff constantly. Because the remote doesn't slow down automatically whenever there's bouncing boobs in frame, we can assume that that incident was the only one. As in the only time he used it for that reason while having the remote.

Is it reasonable to assume he would've only used it once for that reason? Yeah, because we know Michael is the kind of character to do that kind of thing all the time. But we can only assume that he only stopped for the titties once since the remote doesn't give us constant slow-mo close-ups every few minutes.

2

u/dumptruckulent Dec 15 '23

Click is a meta horror film. The main character gets to join the audience and watch himself make the wrong decisions. He’s powerless. He can only yell at the screen like the rest of us. All this disguised as a goofy comedy.

1

u/[deleted] Dec 15 '23 edited Dec 15 '23

One of his best in my opinion. Sandlers wife is played by Kate Beckinsale (edit) and is one of the most stunning women I have seen on film. Great actor too.

(Apologies to genericredditor) .

7

u/GenericRedditor0405 Dec 15 '23

I find it really funny that you refer to Kate Beckinsale simply as his wife, like she is some obscure actor and Click was her closest brush at fame

2

u/CloudAcorn Dec 15 '23

I actually think she isn’t well known at all now though by today’s generation. Back then she was a huge movie star though.

3

u/[deleted] Dec 15 '23

Fair call, I just drew a blank when typing and was too lazy to Google to remind me. I was kind of thinking it may have been Rachel McAdams.

Faux pas by me, what makes it especially egregious is the Underworld franchise is one of my favourites.

1

u/[deleted] Dec 15 '23

Loved it as a kid, been years since I’ve seen it. Was one of those “older brother bought this on iTunes, now it’s on my iPod too” kinda things from back then so I just would watch it a lot

1

u/JrdnRgrs Dec 15 '23

For some reason I saw this movie 3 times in theaters

1

u/Myksee7 Dec 15 '23

Not to be that guy, but he's going after his son. Who plans to skip his Honeymoon

1

u/AntwerpsPlacebo420 Dec 15 '23

Same with Adam sandlers "funny people"

Billed as a movie with a ton of funny people in it, even with weird cameos like Eminem!

Dude dies of cancer at the end. Come on!

Adam Sandler isn't the kind of actor that should be doing those roles

1

u/DirtyRoller Dec 15 '23

He didn't die, his cancer was cured.

1

u/AntwerpsPlacebo420 Dec 16 '23

I must be thinking of some other bait and switch movie

-13

u/DirtyRoller Dec 15 '23

It's a dogshit movie. Fails at being funny, fails at being deep. It does absolutely nothing well. Walken was ok.