10 'Comedies' That Were Secretly Really Depressing

10. Margot At The Wedding

All of independent writer-director Noah Baumbach's 'comedies' rely on mining that sweet comic gold from depressing subject matter. Frances Ha is about being a broke failure in your 20s, While We're Young is about a middle-aged couple desperately trying to feel young and relevant again, while Greenberg is about the numbing effects of depression on a failed musician. Baumbach takes the biscuit, though, with Margot At The Wedding, a film which assembles a set of actors - including Nicole Kidman, Jennifer Jason Leigh and Jack Black, who gets to say or do absolutely nothing funny in this - and asks them all to be utterly miserable for an hour-and-a-half. Though marketed as a comedy, Margot At The Wedding is actually a character study about a caustic, self-centred parent (Kidman) looking to ruin her sister's (Leigh) wedding, just because, and a bunch of other characters who you have absolutely no prospect of liking. Baumbach's films are typically autobiographical, so God knows what kind of monster was the inspiration for this joyless thing.