Why do elephants paint their toenails red?

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       Genius abhors consensus because when consensus is reached,
       thinking stops. Stop nodding your head.
       —Albert Einstein

Some people just simply don't get it.

And that means you, Rotten Tomatoes:



And you, Katie Walsh and Christy Lemire:





It is you who are confused, Christy.

Mike And Dave Need Weeding Dates is NOT raunchy comedy, it is absurdist/existential comedy at its very best.

Says who?

Says Salvatore Attardo:



I quote:





But, as I said, some people don't get it:



Or perhaps, it is just simply the "professional" critics who don't get it.

The audience seems to be getting it well enough.

Is Mike And Dave Need Weeding Dates a successful comedy?

Well, let's put it to this simple test: Does the audience laugh?

The audience does!

A lot!

And that's all one needs to know. Forget the professional critics. Forget Salvatore Attardo. People are laughing. The proof is in the pudding. This is all the evidence one needs that Mike And Dave Need Wedding Dates is successfully funny.

People are laughing because at some level the movie connects with them. It's close to home, and in your face. It connects with people's daily reality—a thing that, incidentally, professional critics, just like politicians, have totally become disconnected from. The movie exposes the absurdity of daily reality and social conventions and makes light of the burden of all those arbitrary rules and norms governing our society and behaviors all of us have been programmed through force of habit to take for granted without necessarily thinking about them.

This dialogue from the movie, in which Alice attempts to cover her total ignorance of what a hedge fund is, is a most perfect illustration of it:



You are laughing?

Of course, you are—that one piece alone is a pure gem.

But are you laughing at Alice, now, or are you laughing with her?

How many people, if put on the spot, would actually be able to give a coherent definition of what a hedge fund really is about?

Insofar as I am concerned, this is possibly one of the best description I have heard.

The way she picks up those ready-made words form the talking points mosaic of daily news (like so many people do), and spin them to the point where they lose coherence, beginning with "too big to fail," and ending up with "Bernie Mac" and "DL Hughley," through words association, inscribes itself in the tradition of Absurdist/Existential comedy at its best.