Looking For Comedies in the Streaming World

It feels like there’s a lot riding on the success of The Naked Gun, the upcoming Liam Neeson-starring, Akiva Schaefer-directed take on the classic Zucker-Abrams-Zucker cop parody The Naked Gun: From the Files of Police Squad! When the original Naked Gun arrived in theaters on December 2, 1988, it wasn’t just one of many comedies released that year, it was surrounded by comedies on all sides. Naked Gun hit theaters one week after Scrooged, one week before Twins and My Stepmother is an Alien, and two weeks ahead of Dirty Rotten Scoundrels and I’m Gonna Git You Sucka. (And the same week as Tequila Sunrise, a film with far fewer laughs.) Ernest was even still saving Christmas in some theaters. By contrast, the new Naked Gun will find a much more arid environment for movie comedies.

2025 has seen animated features, jokey genre movies like Love Hurts and Megan 2.o, and lighthearted family-oriented films like Paddington in Peru and the upcoming Freakier Friday, but little in the way of widely released comedies since One of Them Days way back in mid-January. (Does Bride Hard count? Can anyone confirm the film, allegedly released in theaters last month, actually exists?) Never mind the frequent laments for the death of the rom-com. If The Naked Gun doesn’t catch on, will we see another comedy of any kind released theatrically after Spinal Tap II: The End Continues in September?

That doesn’t mean comedies have disappeared entirely, but they were already struggling to retain a place in theaters in our current blockbuster-focused era even before the Covid-19 pandemic shut down multiplexes in 2020 and have largely lost their foothold in the years that followed the lockdown. The number of first-rate studio-backed comedies released in the past few years is, well, not sizable. Some of the titles that come immediately to mind arrived like balms during the lockdown or its immediate aftermath, like Palm Springs, Eurovision Song Contest: The Story of Fire Saga, Barb and Star Go to Vista Del Mar, and Borat Subsequent Moviefilm. But even some of these, had they made it to theaters, would likely have been niche releases like last year’s (very good) My Old Ass or this year’s Friendship. (Both excellent and hugely successful, Barbie looks like either the globally recognized IP-assisted exception that proves the rule or proof that timid studios just aren’t pushing comedy hard enough and might have better luck with a bit more effort.)

At least these movies, however victimized by changing moviegoing habits and a global pandemic, will likely still be watched and talked about in the years to come. Most contemporary comedies have mayfly-like existences, popping up on streaming services’ landing screens the week they release, if they’re lucky, then giving up that real estate when new content demands the space. So what is out there? Ahead of the release of The Naked Gun, I decided to explore what 2025 had to offer in the way of funny films on streaming. Are we, who gaze longingly at laughless theater marquees, just looking for funny movies in the wrong place?

From a distance, it sure looks that way. Take Back in Action, which debuted on Netflix on January 17th. Directed by Seth Gordon (Horrible Bosses, Identity Thief, Baywatch), the film stars Jamie Foxx and Cameron Diaz as a pair of elite super spies who, having fallen in love and conceived a child, decide to go off the radar when after their superiors and the rest of the world believe them to have died in the line of duty. Fast forward 15 years and the happy couple are raising a pair of teens in the Atlanta suburbs when they’re forced to call on their old skills and, well, go back in action when an old enemy threatens their quiet existence and the rest of the world.

Co-starring Glenn Close, Kyle Chandler, and Andrew Scott, Back in Action is  a slick action comedy that often resembles Mr. and Mrs. Smith if the central couple still liked each other when the film began and traded smiles, quips, and parenting gripes as the bullets flew. Diaz (who ended 11 years of retirement to make the film) and Foxx are, like the characters they play, skilled professionals who know all the right moves for the situation in which they find themselves, but their performances feel a bit like acts of muscle memory. That the script, by Gordon and Brendan O’Brien (Neighbors), gives them little in the way of memorable lines doesn’t help. It’s a studied, but numbing, exercise in competence that’s currently Netflix’s most-watched movie of the year after enjoying the most successful opening weekend numbers since 2022’s The Adam Project.

Does Netflix consider this a win? Presumably. But does “our new movie is as hot as The Adam Project” feel like something to boast about? Though bigger, starrier, and louder than most streaming comedies, Back in Action typifies the current state of streaming comedy in key respects. Just as 30 Rock’s Jack Donaghy once wished for a way to make it 1997 again through science or magic, the world of streaming comedies often feels like a never-ending 2009. That’s a year when a Foxx/Diaz action comedy would have played multiplexes across the land, but instead of putting a creative spin on an older style, Back in Action feels like a conscious throwback to that time made to appeal to those who remember it fondly but just don’t have the energy to make it to the theater anymore. Maybe it’s appropriate that the movie would feel pretty lazy, too.

A new Will Ferrell comedy would have been big news in 2009, too, particularly one that teamed him with Reese Witherspoon and writer-director Nicholas Stoller (Forgetting Sarah Marshall, Neighbors (again), Bros). Instead, You’re Cordially Invited bowed on Prime Video in late January. Again, it’s hard to determine what constitutes success when it comes to streaming services. But it’s safe to say that it made less of an impression debuting on the platform than it would have if it had played in theaters. Put another way, it’s highly possible that many of you reading this did not know of this movie’s existence until just now.