Review: Laughology DVD

STUDIO: The Disinformation Company | DIRECTOR: Albert Nerenberg
RELEASE DATE: 9/7/10 | PRICE: DVD $19.98
BONUSES: deleted scenes
SPECS: NR | 66 min. | Documentary | 1.33:1 fullscreen | stereo | English subtitles

RATINGS (out of 5): Movie | Audio | Video | Overall

The importance of laughter in everyday life is analyzed in Laughology, an enlightening Canadian documentary.

The film is not a comedy documentary in the manner of The Aristocrats; it instead finds journalist Albert Nerenberg trying “to get my laugh back” after a family tragedy. In the process, Nerenberg speaks with a “laugh doctor” who discusses laughter as a cure for stress and looks into various unusual phenomena that involve laughing, from “laughter yoga” to laughter parties.

Nerenberg’s role as a grim-faced narrator who gradually comes around to the light side is the film’s only bit of dispensable artifice. Laughology curiously avoids exploring the topics of comedy at any length, but its overall message about the healing nature of laughter makes it worth a look.

 

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About Ed

Ed Grant has written about film for a wide range of periodicals, books and websites. He edited the reference book The Motion Picture Guide Annual and, since 1993, has produced and hosted the weekly cable program Media Funhouse, which Time magazine called “the most eclectic and useful movie show on TV.”