Australians love a laugh, so why aren’t we making more comedies?

They are familiar lines from classic Australian film comedies that have become part of national vernacular: “That’ll do, pig”, “Tell him he’s dreaming”, “You’re terrible, Muriel.”

But even now, decades after Babe, The Castle and Muriel’s Wedding became hits, the head of the country’s screen producers’ association, Matt Deaner, declared that Australian filmmakers should be making more comedies.

“I don’t think we laugh enough,” he said. “I don’t think Australian cinema has looked at our rich tapestry of humour. I think we’re a very joyful people and that should be better reflected on screen.”

From Priscilla to Crocodile Dundee, Crackerjack, The Castle and Babe, Australia has produced some classic comedies.Credit: Monique Westermann

It was a comment, at the Adelaide Film Festival, that was quickly followed by news that Crocodile Dundee - what’s being called “a 4K Encore Cut” with “considered edits” - is getting another cinema release next year after a new documentary about its making.

The comedy that made Paul Hogan an international star was released 38 years ago, four years before Margot Robbie, who drove the global smash comedy Barbie last year, was even born. Astonishingly, it is still easily the highest-grossing Australian film (taking $47.7 million) in our cinemas.

Also in the top 10 are Babe, Happy Feet, Peter Rabbit and Crocodile Dundee 2. And not far behind are Peter Rabbit 2, Strictly Ballroom, The Dish, The Adventures of Priscilla: Queen of the Desert and Muriel’s Wedding.

Yet as far back as 2008, the head of the Film Finance Corporation, Brian Rosen, was lamenting that the country was favouring making small, dark films “that appeal to about 100,000 people and no-one else”.

Some of the best Australian films this century are dark and disturbing, digging their thumbs into the country’s troubling history. They include Animal Kingdom, Samson & Delilah, Lantana, The Babadook, Sweet Country, Nitram, The Stranger and Talk To Me. While none of them showered their makers in dollars, they were important stories to tell.

So, is Deaner right?

“It would be lovely to have more comedy,” George Miller, the master director behind the Mad Max and Happy Feet films, said. “In fact, the same might be said of all genres.”

While more Australian films could solve a lot of problems, including the always-troubling small share of total box office every year, government financing limitations make that unlikely.

Director Chris Noonan, third from left, with Hugo Weaving, Magda Szubanski and producer George Miller launch Babe in 1995. Credit: Dean Sewell

The latest Screen Australia data shows that comedies accounted for just 16 per cent of all the Australian films (573 including ultra-low budget titles and co-productions with other countries) made in the 15 years up to 2022-23. Dramas made up 34 per cent, with thrillers 15 per cent.

That suggests comedy is under-represented considering its popularity.

Screen Australia’s chief operations officer Grainne Brunsdon said the agency assessed projects “based on merit, not genre preference” but added that “comedies have the potential to attract diverse audiences that reflect our unique sense of humour, and post-Covid, there is an increased global appetite for more joyful, comedic content”.

A sequel planned: From left, Guy Pearce, Terence Stamp and Hugo Weaving in The Adventures of Priscilla: Queen of the Desert.Credit: Elise Lockwood, National Film and Sound Archive

Government agencies trying to drum up funnier films is probably not the solution. New Zealander Leanne Saunders, from the South Australian Film Corporation, said that when the New Zealand Film Commission launched a program to encourage more comedies, it brought out a guru to run a workshop and the show “that came out of it was slated as the worst TV comedy ever made”.

The head of the Adelaide Film Festival, Mat Kesting, cautioned that comedy was hard to get right and it was the creators who would have to drive any improvement, helped by broadcasters and streamers developing comedy writers and comedians who could then make films.

“We should all rally around the creatives and support them as much as we can,” he said.

There was once a corporate attempt to support more Australian comedies but the Macquarie Film Corporation. It started promisingly with Bryan Brown in Dirty Deeds and Mick Molloy in Crackerjack, but fell over in 2006 after the failure of a so-called “formulaic slate of male-directed comedies” that included The Nugget, Horseplay, Takeaway, Bad Eggs, Danny Deckchair and The Wannabes.

Happily, Australian comedies are being made and there is a notable change - many of them are being directed by women.

The dark comedy Audrey, about a former soap star (Jackie van Beek) who pretends to be her comatose actor daughter, is in cinemas next week. Streamer Stan has Nugget Is Dead: A Christmas Story, which has writer-actors Vic Zerbst and Jenna Owen telling a tale about a young woman returning to her coastal home as the family dog dies, out this month.

The team behind 2003’s Gettin’ Square has David Wenham returning as Johnny Spitieri in Spit, which opens in cinemas next March. Scoby, a comedy about a millennial couple who “become unwitting custodians of a sentient kombucha strain”, is shooting in Sydney.

And Screen Australia has just backed the romantic comedy Love Adjacent, about a food critic who suddenly needs help from a chef whose restaurant had to close after she gave it a bad review.

Jackie van Beek in Audrey.Credit: Invisible Republic/Orange Entertainment

Except for Crocodile Dundee, Australians haven’t been nearly as interested in turning a hit into a franchise as the makers of Hollywood’s The Hangover, for example. But Stephan Elliott plans to shoot a sequel to The Adventures of Priscilla next year and American director Will Gluck is hoping to make a third Peter Rabbit.

If their makers were keen, there would have to be interest in new sequels to Babe, The Castle and Strictly Ballroom at least.

Sight unseen, these new films don’t seem to fully reflect “our rich tapestry of humour” that includes multicultural and Indigenous stories so well captured in such dramas as A Lion Returns, Here Out West, Shayda and The New Boy but, collectively, they sound promising.

Christmas comedy Nugget Is Dead stars, from left, Claude Jabbour, Jenna Owen, Mandy McElhinney, Gia Carides and Steve Rodgers. Credit: Stan

And sometimes unexpected comedies succeed. Released with limited expectations, the comic family film Runt has become a hit in recent weeks. A scruffy mutt has become a star.

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