by Joyless Staff

For many moviegoers, the review exists to answer the question, "Do I really want to spend ten bucks on this?" We at Joyless Creatures put ourselves on the frontline, subjecting ourselves to a wide swath of movies every year. Some are really bad. (Seriously) But then, among the most critically maligned there are a few diamonds in the rough, misunderstood films that slip through the cracks and fall into undeserved critical disdain. Here is our attempt to rejuvenate a few of those films that were wrongfully condemned as stinkers. Here they are, 2015's best of the worst.

by Jeremy Meckler and Nicholas Mangigian

Comedy has often had a rough shake in terms of critical praise. While a few near-perfect comedies are hailed as masterful, most of those lauded examples incorporate dramatic elements. Annie Hall may have won an Oscar and have some jokes, but that doesn't make it a comedy. There's a line drawn in the critical sand between movies to be taken seriously and those to be laughed at, and even the best crafted comedies those are still seen as excellent comedies, never to be regarded without the qualifier. Most have the reputation of being mere popcorn flicks and “serious” film scholarship rarely stoops to look at the likes of Dumb and Dumber. Yet the history of comedy film goes back to the invention of the medium, with many early films taking their form from vaudeville acts and gags. From the earliest days of cinema, humor has been an essential element. At the start, visual gags were a staple of the film apparatus–from bizarre formalist shorts like The Big Swallow (1901) to the early cinema comedic masters, Buster Keaton, Charlie Chaplin, and Harry Lloyd, and comedy has always had its fingers on the pulse of cinematic innovation. Think for example of those quippy 40s screwball comedies, as emblematic of the era as film noir, or 80’s broad raunchy farces like Caddyshack or Animal House.