These are the essential elements of human comedies, or “dramedies”:
- These family dramas with comic overtones tend to be “feel good” movies that also have depth and meaning.
- The comedy tends to be less overt as the humor comes from a deep empathy for characters in realistic situations with high personal stakes: survival.
- Family Comedies actively engage the audience in a provocative drama.
- The subtext is often spoken aloud by the audience.
- The audience enjoys the pleasure of experiencing the shadowy behavior of others, like the shadow of commitment, which is possession and coercion.
- Structure is not based on the narrative/plot progression but on the emotional experience of the audience: the rising and falling energy of hope versus despair.
- Family Comedies have a relatively thin outer plot, and most of the time is used in telling the relationship stories and subplot stories.
- Family Comedy characters are victims of their own counter-running sentiments: the desire to be happy, and the desire to survive the family dysfunction.
- The desire for happiness becomes tragic when characters are ambivalent, refuse to leave their comfort zone, and settle for a life of self-pity, blame and complaints.
- Family Comedies take longer to set up, and reach the climax toward the very end.
- The world of Family Comedies is claustrophobic, a reflection of the inner states of the characters. The closed, finite physical boundaries are a metaphor for the emotional and psychological boundaries created by the back-story wounds of the family.
- Setting gives Family Comedies a 3rd and deeper level of meaning. Acts like a silent character, externalizing wishes and fears and boundaries of the characters.
- Beneath the desire for freedom is the belief that one can’t exist outside the family, institution, school or corporation.
- The antagonistic, threshold guardian characters are motivated by rage, the sudden loss of power and status.
- The comedy tends to come from the Guide character. They are driven by their fantasies of freedom and their fear of disappointment.
- These films are more humane; they have a warmth, humor and perspective that normal family dramas don’t have. This builds a wave of emotional power.
- The tension in main character in the claustrophobic family situation vacillates between imploding and exploding.
- Relationship driven: how has the family wound impacted the family and specifically the protagonist-antagonist relationship? The theme derives from the primary relationship arc.
- Family Comedies entertain and engage the audience by orchestrating a radical range of emotional experience.
- Stuck in Dilemma: Regression in family, versus growth outside of family; freedom versus belonging.
- Family comedies are family dramas with a cute, adorable kid (or adults acting like cute, adorable kids).
- Family comedies are about parenting, lack of parenting, and various stages and forms of love: love for a child, parent, brother, or sister; first love; forbidden love; star-crossed lovers; marriage and divorce.
- Main Theme: The premature loss of innocence.
- The main character’s behavior partly derives from the consequences of losing their innocence.
- When the main character is a child or a teenager, they are not judged as harshly because: they can’t grow up before they grow up.
- Themes: guilt, redemption, justice, innocence, freedom, Power, Denial, Trust, Separation Anxiety, Control, Grief, Attraction to the unavailable.
- Themes: “freedom versus belonging” will be more internal for most children — fantasies about escape, dreams about escape
- Children or teens are often primary characters because they are innocent and directly experience survival fears — the adults respond neurotically to survival fears — their pain is buried more deeply.
- The shadow subjects in family comedies deal with taboo, moralistic rules meant to keep order in our society.
- Humor: We laugh when adults are reduced from high status to low status (the Uncle in “My Life as a Dog”; Older Brother John and love interest Charles in “Sense and Sensibility”; the Father in “Monsoon Wedding”; Frank in “Little Miss Sunshine”; Carolyn and Buddy Kane in “American Beauty”; Kramer in “Kramer versus Kramer”; Harding in “One Flew Over the Cuckoos Nest”.)
- Comic archetypes include the trickster, the grump, the know it all, the clown, the nebbish, the innocent child
- The main character is the audience’s primary character of emotional identification, but not necessarily the character that changes the most.
- The main character doesn’t change as much as she grows by following her convictions.
- These are stories about growth through family crisis.
- The antagonist or opponent is the character who represents the status quo values of the family, and may change at the end to support the main character’s “underdog” values.
- The primary antagonist, often a parental figure within the family network, stands for the family codes and values.
- The ending, positive or negative, depends on how rigid the antagonist is. If the antagonist is intractable, the ending will be dark.
- Patriarch or matriarch sets the outer limits of the conflict/dramatic potential.
- The guide represents the underdog value and may bring this value in through levity, warmth, and humor (the grandfather in Little Miss Sunshine; the uncle in My Life as a Dog; Leah, the girlfriend, in Juno)
- Every character is equally important because the theme surfaces through the evolving family constellation.
