Comedy these days is a matter of recycling, mostly, like Head Over Heels that opens this week and that incongruously becomes a series of gross-out jokes. Sure, give 'em kiddie vampires, vomit jokes, faecal humour, bodily fluids, transvestites, gags about big boobs and Sandra Bullock as an FBI agent.
Comedies are content to be happily formula.
Chaplin engaged with his times, with current social and political issues. His films still have depth, and the comedy's both funny and moving. A spoof like Scary Movie's dependent on the Scream series for its laughs through a kind of symbiosis. When one dies off, so does the other. Gosh, one can even re-watch early John Water movies these days like Pink Flamingos, Polyester and Female Trouble, and find his shock taste still truly yucky.