Farce
Farce is very broad comedy, generally appearing in acted media. It's characterized by double entendres, misunderstandings, deceptions, and in general very contrived and ridiculous situations. Contrived Coincidence, so far from being problematic, is required in large doses by the Rule of Funny. Farce is almost never leisurely-paced; "breakneck" is more apt to describe it. Look for a lot of doors opening and shutting and characters stumbling upon other characters when they're in compromising situations/situations that appear compromising.
When a few scenes of a work try to evoke farcical comedy, but the work as a whole isn't necessarily that way, it's a Comedy of Errors. See Category:Mistaken for Index lists all of the many misunderstandings common in the genre. See Fawlty Towers Plot for farces specifically based on escalating lies.
Examples of Farce include:
Film
- Burn After Reading.
- The Fifth Element: has various factions in the movie attempting to impersonate "Korben Dallas" in order to get on a cruise ship to get the cosmic trinket. Hilarity Ensues. Each faction has absolutely no contingency plan, and they end up interfering with each other to such an extent that Dallas manages to slip away.
- It's A Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World
- Noises Off and The Bird Cage were both based on plays.
- The Danny Kaye film The Court Jester features double identities, hypnosis, a Gambit Pileup worthy of Death Note, broad comedy, and fast-paced patter.
- The Pink Panther films: Clouseau is completely unaware of his incompetence. A Shot In The Dark increases the stakes with the growing pile of bodies apparently murdered by Maria Gambrelli and Clouseau's absurdly steadfast belief in her innocence.
- A Shot in the Dark is also based on a French stage play which originally had nothing to do with The Pink Panther and which was not a farce but a murder mystery with some comic elements.
- The Rules of the Game"
 |
Robert de la Cheyniest: Corneille! Put an end to this farce! |
 |
- True Lies is a farce, when it's not being a kick-ass action flick.
- In the Loop
- The Palm Beach Story
- Oscar
- Weekend at Bernie's
Literature
- E
- Locklear Letters
- Lois McMaster Bujold's A Civil Campaign
- Just about everything written by Tom Sharpe especially Wilt
- P. G. Wodehouse was the master of the literary farce. Everything flows from one misunderstanding or blunder to another, culminating to a perfect mess and an even more perfect rescue.
Live-Action TV
- Fawlty Towers follows this formula quite closely, most episodes a snowballing sequence of things going from bad to worse via a combination of bad luck and Basil Fawlty's own magnetism for karmic retribution.
- I Love Lucy (without the innuendo and double entendres)
- Several Friends episodes relied on this, particularly ones that advanced the various story arcs.
- Several episodes of Coupling
- Frasier. Not an episode goes by without awkwardly hilarious crises opening up as characters frantically rush around and juggle lies as they try to hide their messes from each other at break-neck speeds, often causing waves of misunderstandings.
- Three's Company was so archetypal an example of sitcom farce that many later shows explicitly refer to it when farcical situations are unfolding. It was even the Former Trope Namer for the entire Comedy of Errors, which used to be called simply "Three Is Company".
- 'Allo 'Allo!.
Theatre
The form is closely associated with theatre:
- Farce was popularized by Georges Feydeau, whose La Puce a l'oreille (A Flea in Her Ear) was one of the earliest examples of the classic form.
- Oscar Wilde's The Importance of Being Earnest
- Then there was Joe Orton, the 'Oscar Wilde of the Welfare State gentility,' who mixed farce and black comedy to hilarious effect.
- Boeing Boeing
- La Cage aux Folles
- Noises Off
- Lend Me a Tenor
- Rumors (Neil Simon)
- Charley's Aunt
- The School for Scandal
- No Sex, Please, We're British
- A Flea in Her Ear
- The Man Who Came to Dinner
- A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum
- Pierre Corneille's Le Cid got the author into trouble with Cardinal Richelieu, who wasn't just a fictional Big Bad. Apparently mixing tragedy with farce was considered a bad thing in the 1700s, and the argument between the two even got its own cool sounding name, La Querelle du Cid.
- Cyrano De Bergerac: A similar example to La Querelle du Cid, Cyrano De Bergerac is a play which mixes Tragedy with Farce with great success, and it even presents Cardinal Richelieu... as The Ghost. It's characterized by misunderstandings, deceptions, and in general very contrived and ridiculous situations (Playing Cyrano, for instance), or the Gascon Cadets stumbling upon Cyrano and Christian when they're in a situation that appears compromising and a Fetch Quest... in the middle of the death of the protagonist.
- Shakespeare loved this trope for his comedies, with The Comedy of Errors probably being the most overblown one of all.
- Our American Cousin, which people in the 21st century have heard of only because of what happened during its most famous performance.
Web Comics
- The "Dinner for Six" arc in Penny and Aggie involves escalating misunderstandings, mistaken identities, compromising situations and contrived, Slapstick accidents.
Western Animation
- Futurama: "Into the Wild Green Yonder" hinges on this, particularly in the third act.