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6 Unlikely Or Perhaps Mismatched Comedy Duos

The comedic “double act” is a concept that has been around for at least a century, first gaining popularity in the vaudeville halls at the turn of the last century, and continuing to be implemented through the comedy generations right up to the present. It’s a ploy often used on the presumption that two opposing forces, when forced to collide, can in the best cases result in explosive, uproarious comedy. We’ve seen the likes of comedy duos Laurel and Hardy, Abbott and Costello, Brooks and Reiner, and Wilder and Pryor team up to produce memorable acts and classic movies. The gimmick has spilled over the borders of pure comedy to inform a genre specific to the medium of film in the years since—that of the buddy cop genre.

2) Meet the Parents

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If Robert De Niro’s initial phase of acting lasted from Mean Streets to Cape Fear and his newest phase possibly having been ushered in by his work in Silver Linings Playbook, the peak of his second, comedy-focused period is surely the Meet the Parents franchise. His work in Analyze This was enough to convince studios that he could perform well in comedies, and for quite a while, this was his domain, to the point that current generations of movie audiences are surprised to find out that he was one of the most, if not the most, influential and celebrated dramatic actors of the previous 30 years. Teaming him with, or rather, pitting him against Ben Stiller in Meet the Parents was a further progression into a new generation of comedy.

The big surprise here was just how funny Robert De Niro can be. And it’s presumably a result of the seriousness with which he approaches dramatic roles spilling over into the straight approach he takes to comedic characters. So throwing together someone who can earnestly perform ridiculous tasks like De Niro’s character does with one of the most versatile comedic actors turned out to be rather inspired.

Stiller can be the ridiculous one, as demonstrated by Zoolander and Tropic Thunder, but he’s also established himself as a really good surrogate character who is faced with a series of awkward or absurd circumstances and is required simply to react in a relatable way to these sorts of events. So while the movie as a whole isn’t quite a masterpiece, it has enough moments between this pairing of performers to make it something of a modern classic.

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