The Comedy Genre

For my film project I have decided to make a comedy film. In some respect it is a black comedy as it contains terrorism (the tabooed subject) which will hopefully appear comical.
The comedy genre often appears as a hybrid with another genre. There are many comedy-hybrids out there, and the truth is, that you can put comedy almost anywhere. Teen comedies are often set in high school and involving adolescent sexual adventure and conflicts with authority like the American Pie franchise. There is the romantic comedy such as Bridget Jones. There are action comedy films (Rush Hour/Brett Ratner/1998), Comedy Horror (Shaun of the Dead/Edgar Wright/2004), Sci-fi comedy (Ghostbusters) and even military comedy (MASH/Robert Altman/1970).
However, comedy is not always a hybrid. Comedy can just be comedy, and this too comes in different ‘modes’. There are satires such as MASH and parodies such as the Scary Movies.
Slapstick is also a ‘mode’ of comedy. The common conventions of slapstick are: Pain with no real consequence and impossible situations. Take Home Alone; the antagonists are constantly being seriously hurt, but only seem to show burn marks or bruises. We never see any blood, which of course is impossible when bricks are thrown from the top of a four-storey building.
As an audience we generally laugh at two things: the gags and the situation. The gags of course being the jokes which have to be appropriately placed to cause us to laugh. The situation, which could be anything from mistaking a real funeral for a crown jewel burial (Johnny English/Peter Howitt/2003) or simply getting on the wrong plane (Home Alone 2/Chris Columbus/1992).
There different things which can make us laugh such as inverted expectations and incongruities. Inverted expectations are obviously things which we do not expect. An example of an inverted expectation is in the film Kick Ass; we do not expect a 12 year old girl to kill a large number of drug lords - and enjoy it to the tune of (Banana Splits) Tra La La Song. For some bizarre reason things we do not expect are funny, with the exception of horror and thriller films perhaps.
Comedies use stereotypes. The stupid blonde (Legally Blonde/Robert Luketic/2001) always does something unintelligent, the redneck (Dukes of Hazzard) appears uneducated and criminal and the Asians (Mean Girls/ Mark Waters/2004) usually appear nerdy and intelligent. The purpose; these stereotypes quickly introduce us to the characters and help us understand them. Plus, the comedy genre mocks them mercilessly.
Comedies usually have happy endings, excluding black comedy . Black Comedies tend to use ‘tabooed’ subjects. A good example of a black comedy is Keeping Mum (Niall Johnson/2005) which is about a nanny who happens to kill anyone who even slightly annoys her - while living under the villages Vicar’s roof. The ending isn’t really happy, but neither is it that bad. Everyone in the family has resolved their problems, but there are many of the locals dead in the pond out back.
My film will have a happy ending if you consider the hundreds of lives saved when the terrorists fail. I will also use stereotypes, because of the film being so short that they are necessary to quickly introduce and there will be plenty of inverted expectations to make the audience laugh.