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Looking for comedies that critique capitalism
(self.chapotraphouse)
Sorry to Bother You (2018)
They Live isn't quite a comedy, but it's certainly got some good laughs.
The Boys isn't entirely anti-capitalist, but it definitely gets some strong jabs in, and I think it is considered a comedy show? Super satire?
They live is a classic and everyone should see it. Also features what's in my mind one of the best fight scenes in cinema.
The Trotsky (2009) is a cute comedy about a high school kid who believes he's the reincarnation of Leon Trotsky and tries to unionize his school. This is a scene where they throw a high school dance with the theme of "social justice" and the kids are all dressed as PLA and Zapatistas and shit
Walker (1987) is a very funny satire of manifest destiny but is played very straight, such that I think you might have to genuinely be a leftist to notice the jokes. It's by the guy who did Repo Man, which might also fit the bill but this is better.
Inherent Vice (2016) is a screwball noir comedy about capital taking over Los Angeles.
Triangle of Sadness (2022) is a lot of things but should fit the bill for you. Actively Marxist captain, L'internationale playing in the kitchen, etc.
White Lotus season one (2020) is a great and genuinely thoughtful comedy about the myriad of different ways the super rich are terrible. A tour-de-force performance by the guy who plays the hotel manager as a doped-up Basil Fawlty.
I dont fully agree with Triangle of Sadness. It was almost there, but in the end it libbed out and went with 'anyone can go mad with power, even poor people'.
I agree, but the question wasn't "what's a left comedy with good politics", it's a comedy and it does critique capitalism. I thought the ending sacrificed the message as well. First act with the models was the strongest I thought.
Yeah, I agree.
Walker didn't really do it for me. There's a couple of scenes where there's a lot of homoerotic tension and the joke is just that.. Walker is gay.
dr strangelove - more about idiotic fascist cold war bloodthirst than capitalism, but you know, they're same picture.
before 
even existed.A lot of these are pretty tangential, but it's kind of a thin genre. Please look all of these up before watching. A lot of them are old movies that have a lot of bad jokes and upsetting things mixed in with the good jokes.
Blazing saddles is about racism and to an extent capitalism
Clerks is kind of about bullshit jobs, with two gen x slackers doing everything but their non-jobs as they muse about life and star wars. Check the content warnings first, it's got some jokes that aren't great mixed in with the fun stuff.
Trading places is interesting from a historical perspective, in that some normal people pull one over on rich people, but the prestige has them becoming rich people instead of changing anything. Again, lots of bad jokes so check a content warning first.
The blues brothers touches on the carceral state. The plot is that the catholic orphanage that where the blues brothers were raised is at risk of being foreclosed by the bank, so they go on a holy mission to raise enough money to save the orphanage by assembling a bunch of great musicians to form a power band. Along they way they fight nazis, racists, cops, the illinois national guard, and Carrie Fisher armed with a flame througher. Again, old movie, check the content warnings, there are some gross bits.
Actually the 80s were full of "plucky kids try to stop crooked developers from bulldozing the library/community center/old folks home to build a mall" plots.
Iirc o brother where art thou features a bunch of stuff about depression era economic violence as a background theme.
American Psycho is a horror/comedy in the starkest, most pitch black way, that is a scathing condemnation of the failsons that rule the world. It's extremely violent and horrible, please look up some content warnings before going in.
Goodbye, Lenin's premise is that a woman in the gdr falls in to a coma in 1989 and wakes up after reunificationer. Her child tries to shield her from what happened after the fall of communism. Unfortunately it's a twenty year old movie and i don't remember what it's take on capital is. Hmm. Reading the plot description on the wiki it sounds pretty brainworms. Might be worth looking at as a historical document.
Wristcutters (cw: suicide) has some simle critiques about the meaninglessness and alienation of capitalist labor. I cannot stress enough that while this is a funny, charming, lighthearted, and very humane movie the characters are in an afterlife for people who died of suicide and that is a constant theme.
Charlie Chaplin's Modern Times is worth a look. One of the classics of cinema, and a great example of Charlie's sublime skill as an entertainer.
The keystone kops comedies from the early 20th might be worth a look, too.
Robocop is a very smart skewering of the corporate brutality of the 80s and of police violence masquerading as a copaganda crime exploitation movie. It's very over-the-top violent, as it is satirizing contemporary police crime movies and middle class panic over urban crime.check the content warnings, it's very violent. It's Verhoeven to give you an idea of what you're getting in to.
Total Recall is another Verhoeven movie with some anti-capitalist themes. A core plot point is the corporate dictator of mars using his control over oxygen to discipline the working class. As with everything in the 80s, content warnings abound.
Fifth Element is an action comedy where the plot is driven by a CEO's insatiable greed. It's very horny, has some bad depictions of indigenous liberation movements, and a lot of shooting. Check the content warnings.
Newsies is a musical about the 1899 newsboys strike, from disney of all companies. Capitalist recuperation in action.
The men who stare at goats is tangentially related to capitalism as a satire of the absurdity and weirdness of the mic
The pentagon wars is an old classic about mic corruption and America's inability to make a tank that isn't an embarassment
Thank you for smoking is a black comedy about the tobacco industry, lobbyists, and propaganda
GOOD post
and also if you italicize/capitalize the titles in this it will be 200% easier to read
Reading the plot description on the wiki it sounds pretty brainworms.
Yeah, Goodbye Lenin is definitely that. It's been a while since I've seen it, but iirc at the end of the movie, the mom goes on a rant about how she used to believe in socialism until she realized how terrible it was 
IDK I think this is wrong comrade. The mother may have expressed criticisms of GDR at some point, I don't quite remember but I think that's ultimately fair. Generally she missed the GDR dearly. The entire plot of the movie is about a young man who was apolitical-to-reactionary learning there was something of serious value lost when the wall fell.
That resembled my interpretation as well. MC goes from typical youthful rebelliousness against authority aimed at the DDR (the strongest authority available to him) to fascination with West Germany to slow disillusionment with West Germany to recognition of the DDR's flaws but overall sadness at its loss, and coping with the meaning of its loss.
There's multiple stories told together though including family drama (and possibly some symbolic parallels between the mother and DDR itself) and coming of age moments, along with a lot of really dry/sarcastic humor. I personally recommend it. There's also some very subtle digs at capitalism like how after the wall falls he's often exhausted from working late (something that didn't happen under the DDR), which at one point results him falling asleep while he's supposed to be babysitting.
It's been over a decade since I've seen it, so you're probably right. I should probably just rewatch it at some point, since back then I had no idea what East Germany went through after reunification (Europe Since 1989: A History by Philipp Ther is a 
-ass book, but has some good parts in it about the former DDR).
Check out "Stasi State or Socialist Paradise" if you're curious. It's basically a defense of things the GDR did right.
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Actually the 80s were full of "plucky kids try to stop crooked developers from bulldozing the library/community center/old folks home to build a mall" plots.
The Dirt Bike Kid : When his mother sends Jack off with money to buy groceries, he comes home with a magic supercharged dirt bike instead. His mother is furious, but when Jack uses the magic bike to save the local hot dog stand from the clutches of corrupt big business, he becomes the town hero.
Batteries Not Included : Aliens help a feisty old New York couple in their battle against the ruthless land developer who's out to evict them.
The more accurate genre description: "people unable to stop developers from bulldozing the library/community center/old folks home/etc inexplicably are rescued by some magic/aliens/Deus ExMachina/belief in the supernatural/etc"
It's very Capitalist Realism with a dubiously resolved happy ending tacked on. The 80s are so weird.
its always sunny in philly seasons 3-8
its american satire and it does a great job of making fun of reactionaries in the US, still has a bit of lib bias but hey
This is now the Movie Nomination Thread for October. Saves me labor
If it doesn't have to be comedy pretty much any horror movie that isn't about rape (and even some of those [Alien(s)]) is an abstraction for capitalism
Also the Cyberpunk "genre"
Office Space (movie about corporate work)
Boondocks (tv series, it's about more than that though)
Black Dynamite (movie & TV series, is about Blaxploitation, which criticises capitalism)
Adam Ruins Everything (Web/TV series)
For games comedy is much harder (is comedy even a genre?)
Fallout 1, 2 (comedy?)
Bioshock series (comedy?)
Deus Ex
Monopoly (boardgame, I'm not joking)
The Whitest Kids You Know
Killing It (tv series)
The Young Ones is a classic for me for some good old Thatcher bashing now and again. Doesn't really do much critiquing of capitalism in general but it's well worth a watch.
Movies: Breakin' 2: Electric Bugaloo.
As far as games go Disco Elysium isn't a comedy exactly but it has very funny parts and was written by open communists. Pirate it though, fuck ZA/UM
I don’t think anyone has recommended Tati’s Playtime? Really fun movie critiquing industrialization and modernism.
Backing this. It's amazing. They built a whole mini city for the set.
wondershowzen has lots of skits that criticize capitalism etc. its a parody of a kids show
The kid interviewing wall street bankers always gets me: "who did you exploit today?"
Den Brysomme Mannen (the bothersome man) is a kinda surreal look at "standard social life", so to speak. Its not explicitly critical of capitalism, but is starkly critical of the social order (a social order i associate heavily with capitalism). I found the film hilarious, but my sense of humor has been broken for a long time. Its certainly a dark humor, the kind of "well, I can laugh or I can kill myself" kind of humor. Check CWs, i havent seen it in a very long time.
spoilers for the movie (cw suicide)
its about a man who kills himself and ends up in a strange afterlife. Its the perfect affluent persons paradise: its devoid of all meaning and substance. He eventually tries to kill himself again to escape, but finds he is unkillable. Eventually he hears some music coming from a crack in a basement wall, and digs a hole through to get to it. Just as hes getting through, the police come and take him away. He manages to grab a handful of cake from the other side. Following this he is banished to a terrible place, and the movie ends.
Comrade Detective is amusing
Comrade Detective is an American buddy cop series created by Brian Gatewood and Alessandro Tanaka. The show follows the premise of popular US action/cop-buddy films and television shows from the 1980s and presents the episodes as a fictional lost Romanian television show commissioned by the Communist Party to promote a communist worldview during the Cold War.
going to check this out
Chicken Run
how has no one mentioned office space
Death to America
Disappointed to see no one’s recommended The Other Guys. While not strictly a critique of capitalism, it’s directly related to how fucked the ’08 bailout was, written and directed by the same guy who did the big short. And it’s mega funny.
fun with dick and jane the Jim Carrey remake is also good for that
this post was submitted on 06 Sep 2023
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