Writers and studio executives are throwing poop joke after poop joke into family-oriented animated films. And it's getting tired.
I once went to a comedy club where a would-be Bob Saget made jokes about strip clubs. After two minutes of gags about fat bitches, a pissed-off heckler yelled "Get a life!"
Cue what Sony Pictures Animation co-chair Amy Pascal said after seeing an early version of Surf's Up: "More poop jokes."
The rest was history. Whether it was a character urinating on another, or a third character called "a dirty trash can full of poop," Surf's Up was loaded with poop. And the box office went straight down the toilet too.
DreamWorks executives thought an extended crotch-hit sequence in Flushed Away would improve the movie. Aardman Animation, DreamWorks' collaborators, weren't happy about it, and neither were audiences. Flushed Away tanked in theatres.
And herein lies the lesson for studio executives: poop jokes are good for one or two laughs but too much gets dull. Yes they're a guilty pleasure, like sneaking Daddy's smokes. It's fun once or twice but they give a nasty case of dry-mouth. And too many poop jokes do the same.
Not all raunch is bad. Bart's naked skateboarding scene in The Simpsons Movie was an extended gag that worked. However, it was a sequence that played with audience expectations, and got great laughs by doing so.
The key here, kids n' filmmakers, is imagination. Kids deserve so much better than gags that pretend they're funny just because they're raunchy.
Look at Pixar's movies. How many poop jokes or crotch humour do you see? How much imagination do those movies have? Is it a coincidence that all of Pixar's movies have been hits, and they are currently one of the most respected animation studios out there?
In conclusion: poop jokes = lack of imagination. And ultimately, a lack of box office returns.
