This week, I was looking through my Letterboxd account trying to pin down a film to discuss when I came upon an interesting subject.
Looking through the reviews on The Lego Batman Movie, I was reminded of my favorite aspect of Letterboxd. Half of the top reviews I saw were jokes made about the film, and indeed this is so for many other films.
Here’s some from The Lego Batman Movie:
Some from Dune:
And some from Morbius, which has the highest ratio of joke reviews to serious reviews I have ever seen:
But a particularly poignant film for the analysis of jokes, in my opinion, is Monty Python and the Holy Grail. Similarly to Duck Soup, its foundations are built on jokes and bits with sometimes very strenuously connected plotlines. As a result, a lot of the attention it gets in its reviews are simply quotes of jokes from the film. I hardly see any attention given to the film’s ending, but virtually anyone seems to be able to quote the French Taunter, the anarcho-communist peasant, and the Black Knight. I think it’s interesting that while a sight gag or extended bit might be funny, jokes are truly memorable. People might resonate with a review of the film that speaks to the emotional impact of watching it as a kid, but the most popular reviews parrot the most successful jokes of the film.
Similarly, a review of The Joker might have some interesting points on its treatment of neurodivergence and societal pressures, but saying “This happened to my buddy Eric once” is a punchy, surprising joke that leaves a lasting impression on a reader. The community around Letterboxd is such that I now rush to see what others have said after I view a film, and more often than not I am vindicated more by jokes than self-appointed film critics. What Mary Douglas discusses in her essay on jokes, that sense of building a community through joking, resonates with how I feel as a user of the blog site. I feel connected to those who use comedy in response to their experiences rather than sentimentality or even vitriol.
As a fellow Letterboxd user myself, I found what you’ve written to be very pertinent to my own experience. However, while I like the good joke review every now and then, I often find it to be rather annoying, considering I use the site for people’s actual thoughts on the film – and that’s nothing to say of the ‘thirst’ reviews that distastefuly lust for the actors. My question, then, is do you think there comes a point where joking can be considered inappropriate? We of course saw in Duck Soup how it thrives on making jokes at the worst possible moments, so there is something to be said about jokes being inherently inappropriate, with that being precisely what makes them funny. But is this something that can easily become tiresome? Can the very habit of joke-making lose its good humour when it leaves its recipients weary?
While I love the playfulness of the inside jokes on Letterboxd, I understand the boredom with it. For me, the monotony comes less from the jokes’ dominance on the site and more from their eventual lack of originality. I wonder if there is a distinct point at which the satisfaction from comedic patterns’ recognizability sours to oversaturation or if it is too variable to pinpoint. The weariness you describe, however, can lead to evolutions like parody or the shaggy dog story Douglas mentions—maybe, then, if slightly redirected, Letterboxd users’ preoccupation with timeliness and virality could be what saves rather than kills it.
I totally agree it can become tiresome, and I think it’s hard to strike a good balance between allowing people to post joke reviews (wherein the site is overrun with them) and only allowing serious critique. I think the fact that one can reply to these sorts of reviews invites criticism, and certainly some are more than willing to express distaste for the less-than-serious film critic. This might prove a deterrent, or perhaps a better system of separating reviews into comments (jokes, short reviews) and critiques (longer reviews, anything that links to a longer blog post) may prove a remedy. I want to note that I have also seen some “joke” reviews that are surprisingly poignant in their jokes, and can be done well enough to broaden one’s perspective on a film or its context.
I found your argument on Letterboxd’s reviews very interesting and brilliant: I personally think that the best part of Letterboxd actually is its community. After watching a film, I always log it on Letterboxd and read other people’s reviews to see if I get their jokes, which basically become inside jokes that only people who watched that specific film can understand. In my opinion it is even funnier when Letterboxd users write “silly” and “dumb” reviews about “serious” movies, such as, for example, The Godfather.
I really like your idea on Letterboxd reviews and it is true that the best part about this is the community coming together to make their own comedy and build off each other. One thing that comes to mind that is similar to Letterboxd is TikTok, and specifically the comments on TikTok. For example, whenever someone drops that most disgustingly atrocious remix of a song, the comments will say “THIS GOES HARD ON MUTE” or “YOU HAVE A HIDDEN TALENT, KEEP IT HIDDEN”. What makes these comments so special is that it started from one person writing a comment with that structure and many others following that same formula, overall making you feel more connected to the people in the comment section. Arguably, I think one of the best things about TikTok is its comment section, and I think this is in part due to its sense of community and unity between people.