The Smug Spring of Cinema: When Blockbusters Prioritize Attitude Over Substance
This spring's cinematic landscape is awash with a peculiar phenomenon: blockbuster films that radiate an overwhelming sense of self-satisfaction. From action thrillers to sci-fi flicks and horror sequels, a deluge of recent releases appears riddled with what can only be described as smug smarm, prioritizing writerly cleverness over genuine humor or narrative depth.
Mike & Nick & Nick & Alice: A Case Study in Forced Irreverence
The new Hulu movie Mike & Nick & Nick & Alice has been aggressively marketed as a genre-mashing wild ride, with festival reactions and early reviews praising its supposed blend of sci-fi, action, romance, and buddy comedy. Yet, beneath this ambitious facade lies a comedy with three painfully similar and deadening modes. The first involves characters displaying unexpected familiarity with incongruous pop culture elements, such as a scientist singing along to a niche Billy Joel song from the Disney cartoon Oliver & Company or criminals engaging in lengthy discussions about Gilmore Girls.
If that fails to elicit laughs, writer-director BenDavid Grabinski resorts to the flip side: characters not knowing things. Gags include a man unfamiliar with Winnie-the-Pooh, another ignorant of chloroform's proper name, and a third who doesn't understand the word "comeuppance." The third, even less sophisticated strain of comedy relies on characters who swear excessively, with one even nicknamed Dumbass Tony. Throughout, the heavy hand of the screenwriter is palpable, straining for irreverence and desperate to signal that this screenplay is unlike any other.
A Trend Across Genres: Ready or Not 2 and They Will Kill You
However, Mike & Nick & Nick & Alice is far from alone. March's Ready or Not 2: Here I Come returns scream queen Samara Weaving to a scenario where she must evade wealthy devil-worshippers, delivered with arch yet lazy writing, profanities, and ironic music cues. The film seems to expect belly laughs when a character uses a PA system to crudely demand evacuation rather than employing polite language.
A week later, They Will Kill You debuted with a highly similar premise—a young woman battling Satan-worshipping attackers in a confined space—and similarly quasi-irreverent, potty-mouthed humor. While it occasionally allows scenes to play out without dialogue, it still scrapes bottom with witticisms like "who the fuck are you?" and sentences gratuitously appended with "bitch."
The Gentler Side: Project Hail Mary's Quippy Adorability
Even the feel-good mega-hit Project Hail Mary exhibits a gentler version of this screenwriter smarm. Here, genius scientist Ryan Gosling communicates with an alien life form through quippy adorability, with banter that is family-friendlier but similarly designed to showcase the film-makers' convention-flouting cleverness. This approach, reminiscent of the once-powerful geek-news website Ain't It Cool News, flatters the sensibilities of a geek audience by presenting outside-the-box thinking that isn't quite 90s-style ironic detachment but rather half-ironic attachment.
Tracing the Roots: From Whedon to Tarantino and Beyond
Blame for this reawakened strain of semi-irony can be assigned to various film-makers and traced through recent film history. For years, the ubiquity of warmed-over blockbuster quippiness was attributed to disgraced former Avengers impresario Joss Whedon and his many imitators in the Marvel stable. However, the current iteration is more intentionally tangential and harder to rush-rewrite at executive request, seemingly done out of love rather than obligation.
This trend also evokes 90s auteurs like Kevin Smith or Quentin Tarantino, who punctuated bloodshed with minutiae-laden dialogue. Yet, these new films lack the daredevil energy of vintage Tarantino, whose later works have shifted focus. Screenwriter Shane Black's influence on mixing action and comedy is likely undercounted, but when combined with edgy gore, it's hard to ignore the impact of the Deadpool movies.
The Deadpool Effect: R-Rated Superheroes as Comedy Outlets
Deadpool, starring Ryan Reynolds as a referential, regenerating superhero who jokes amidst bloody action, is evoked clearly in films like They Will Kill You, where star Zazie Beetz appeared in Deadpool 2 and villains share similar mutilation resilience. These new movies don't break the fourth wall like Deadpool, making their screenwriter-ly interjections feel phonier as they try to pass them off as genuine behavior rather than a character-driven conceit.
The real damage from Deadpool's success is more insidious: it turned R-rated superhero films into de facto outlets for the lack of actual big-studio comedies. Audiences still crave laughter, but embedding smarmy sorta-comedy into action, horror, and sci-fi allows films to tap into feelgood energy without cultivating genuine comic talent. This explains why movies like Mike & Nick & Nick & Alice or Ready or Not 2 aren't very funny—their creators excel in action or horror, not comedy.
The Future of Film Comedy: Embedded or Genuine?
Project Hail Mary's humor skates by because directors Philip Lord and Christopher Miller have actual comedic experience, but its success might encourage more prefab irreverence in mega-budget spectacles. While there will always be a place for comic relief, especially with actors like Ryan Gosling revitalizing careers as bumbling leads, many of these spring releases feel less like genre hybrids and more like attitudes in search of a joke or cleverness in search of a subject. Ultimately, they risk representing screenwriters in search of a development deal rather than delivering authentic cinematic experiences.
