Slapstick film

Slapstick films are comedy films where physical comedy that includes pratfalls, tripping, falling, are highlighted over dialogue, plot and character development. The physical comedy in these films contains a cartoonish style of violence that is predominantly harmless and goofy in tone.

Silent film had slapstick comedies that included the films starring Buster Keaton, Charlie Chaplin, the Keystone Cops and Harold Lloyd. These comedians often laced their slapstick with social commentary while comedians such as Abbott and Costello, Laurel and Hardy and The Three Stooges did not contain these social messages.

There were fewer slapstick comedies produced at the advent of sound film. The genre resurfaced after the World War II in France with films by Jacques Tati and in the United States with films It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World and The Great Race as well as the films of comedians like Jerry Lewis.