10 Famous Movies Whose Genres Everybody Always Seems To Get Wrong

4. The Cable Guy

Mistaken Genre: Comedy What It Actually Is: Thriller This 1996 film stars Jim Carrey at the height of his laugh-inducing powers, fresh off the success of comedic classics such as Ace Ventura Pet Detective, The Mask, and Dumb and Dumber. And, it is also notable for being comedian Judd Apatow's first work as a feature film producer. Add in direction from Ben Stiller, and the casting of comedic actors Matthew Broderick and Jack Black, and you have all the makings for a classic, laugh-a-minute comedy. Except, The Cable Guy is not really a comedy, and not because I didn€™t find its jokes to be funny. People have dubbed the film a "black comedy" but, if you disregard the track records of its actors, there€™s a major creep-you-out factor to The Cable Guy akin to what you would find in a psychological thriller. In one scene, Carrey's "Chip Douglas" (named after a character from the 1960s sitcom My Three Sons) beats a man senseless in a restaurant bathroom in order to send a message that he's not to go near the ex-girlfriend of Broderick's Steven Kovac character. And, in many other scenes, Chip exhibits pathological and obsessive behavior, stalking Steven and his family and appearing as a legitimate physical threat to their safety and well-being.