One fateful Hanukkah, I received the box set of Saturday Night Life: The Complete First Season (1975-1976). No geeky teen can discover Gilda Radner, John Belushi, Andy Kaufman, and early Steve Martin all at once and come out of it unchanged. I was forever doomed to comedy nerd-dom, where I continue to spend my days.
Though it was tempting to just stick to watching Gilda clips on repeat, I expanded my horizons and collected many comedic favorites across film and TV: Strangers with Candy, Little Miss Sunshine, Animal House, almost anything Woody Allen (minus the Scarlett Johansson years, of course), The Colbert Report, recently The Way Way Back and much more. It’s currently a beautiful time to be a comedy geek, especially for TV: I love Louie, Parks and Recreation, and Key and Peele.
While comedy is my favorite, my father has said that I will like any movie so long as I get to “sit in the dark and eat popcorn.” He may be right – there’s something so inherently magical to me about seeing a movie in theaters. A heads up: if you’re looking for criticism of anything with Robert Downey Jr. in it, I am not the reviewer to come to. The same goes for Kevin Spacey, Allison Janney, Amy Poehler, and Joss Whedon. They can (probably) do no wrong in my eyes (Whedon’s jump from perfect The Avengers to beautiful Much Ado About Nothing may be the coolest sequence of projects of all time).