While the concept of a dystopian society is far from appealing, comedy dystopian flicks often paint an unrealistic picture of how society might look if our existence were to become “zombified.” Take Edgar Wright’s Shaun of the Dead; it’s initially just a cinematic version of a dystopian Grand Theft Auto, finding hilarious means to butcher oncoming zombies, breaking and entering, and then heading to The Winchester for a pint, a game of pool, and to “wait for all of this to blow over.” On the face of it, it’s fun and exciting.
When the Covid-19 pandemic shook the globe in 2020, the transition into full-frontal lockdown was initially novel, though this 21st-century version of dystopia certainly didn’t replicate that of the movies. Instead, our family dynamics changed to incorporate daily doses of Carol Baskin, Joe Exotic, Aaron Hernandez, and Michael Jordan in many a Netflix marathon, and the marathons didn’t stop there when downloads of Nike Run Club, and Strava went through the roof as people sought their fitness fix. The introductory weeks of lockdown niceties invariably, and relatively quickly, descended into depravity, pounds began to be piled on through copious amounts of home-baked carrot cake, the Carol Baskin memes were exhausted, and the mindless running all in the name of health and fitness was eventually reduced to over-indulging in the exercise of the masturbatory kind.
Dystopian comedies have been an increasingly popular genre in recent years, with screenwriters and directors opting to put a different twist on the traditional concept of a dystopian world, adding comedy and humor to counteract the utter absurdity of police states and tyrannical regimes. Here are some of the best dystopian comedies…
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5 A Scanner Darkly
Warner Independent Pictures
Based on the king of the dystopian sci-fi genre, Philip K. Dick’s, novel and directed by Richard Linklater (Dazed and Confused, Before Midnight, and Boyhood), A Scanner Darkly is a film that details an undercover cop’s attempts to infiltrate a notorious drug gang; however during his mission, he becomes a drug addict and is forced to protect his identity. It’s a surprisingly funny movie (thanks mostly to hilariously whacked-out parts from Woody Harrelson and Robert Downey Jr.) even if it is an abstractly disturbing one.
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In a dystopian society where the United States has lost the war on drugs, Bob Arctor (Reeves) is deployed as part of the nationwide surveillance of drug users in order to clamp down on the 20% of the US population hooked on “substance D.” The rotoscope computer animation is as intriguing as it is surreal, and sometimes produces some comically imaginative if morbid effects.
4 Sorry to Bother You
Mirror ReleasingFocus Features
Sorry to Bother You announced Boots Riley on the directorial circuit, with the dystopian satire being his feature debut. Starring LaKeith Lee Stanfield as Cassius Green, an unambitious man living in his uncle’s garage with his girlfriend, Detroit (Tessa Thompson), who, after being threatened with eviction, gets a job at a Regalview call center. Adopting a typically nasal “white man’s voice” in order to procure sales, the dark comedy acts as a socially conscious exposé on the state of American capitalism and the racist societal undertones, and transitions into a bizarre, dystopian finale. It’s a weird yet important masterpiece.
3 Idiocracy
20th Century Fox
In Mike Judge’s dystopian satire Idiocracy, the film reverses the idea of natural selection, and the genetic modification of future generations through the breeding of intelligent people, and is instead, a demonstration of how the world would be if the world’s dumbest bred indiscriminately and the world’s most intellectual did not at all.
Joe Bauers (Luke Wilson), a distinctly average soldier, voted the “most average” is paired with a prostitute, Rita (Maya Rudolph), in an experiment gone wrong, Joe and Rita’s lives have been suspended for half a millennium, before they are reintegrated into an anti-intellectual society that is simply unrecognizable.
2 Sleeper
United Artists
Directed by, written by, and starring Woody Allen, 1973’s Sleeper tells the tale of Miles Monroe (Allen), a health food shop owner, who, after a medical procedure goes terribly wrong is cryopreserved and is then revived two centuries later. Tasked with challenging a cruel, tyrannical police state, and discovering the whereabouts of “Project Aries,” Miles accompanied by his partner and lover Luna (a delightful Diane Keaton) rushes to rid 2173 society of this brainwashing dictatorship.
In typical early Allen style, Sleeper is a movie full of razor-sharp dialogue and idiosyncratic quirks, and pays homage to the great Buster Keaton, Charlie Chaplin, and Harold Lloyd and the slapstick silent era of 1920s Hollywood.
1 The Lobster
Element Pictures
The Favourite and The Killing of a Sacred Deer director Yorgos Lanthimos made an underrated little masterpiece with 2015’s The Lobster, a hilarious yet disturbing take on a dystopian form of macabre romance. Starring Colin Farrell and Rachel Weisz in the titular roles, the movie explores the concept of singletons placed in a hotel where they are given 45-days to find love, or they risk being reincarnated into an animal of their choosing.
Farrell appears as David, an honest man unperturbed by the oddity of the situation he finds himself whose just been left by his wife. The Lobster is a film full of bone-dry hilarity, and these expressionless, deadpan protagonists whose straight-faced literalism in the face of such calculated cruelty is rib-ticklingly funny, but also so very endearing and thought-provoking.
