Comedy(d)rama

Little Brother (2026)
Stock comedy with delivery sometimes so rote it's like they're reading the treatment. John Cena has to bear the brunt of this because he's the ostensible straight man, but it's director Matt Spicer who makes it worse for Cena, requiring dragged out modular reaction shots. Eric Andre doesn't go over big as the source of chaos/laughs mainly because of the material. He's dropped into a vehicle that uses his persona readymade and the attempts at building a character are forced clownishness, when not pure leaps of zany.

Game Night (2018)
All in the delivery. The premise is obvious, seems commonplace even if it's not re-used, and the structure doesn't add anything particularly novel. But there's still plenty of wit in the dialogue and in the handling of it by cast and directors, so it's firing off and rolling along all the way. The dash of it all keeps it from self-conscious cutesiness or cloying caricatures.

Power Ballad (2026)
Mercifully shifts from two beaten paths, the wedding singer comedy and the big public come-clean. It's more serious in the feel-good way, but also does a nice job playing that more lightly for the ending. There's one great scene where Paul Rudd's character seeks help from a band mate he'd slagged off, that takes a path less sculpted and thus gives a more candid chain of reactions. The rest of the movie never quite reaches that level, and the payoff moment for the meeting with the star doesn't match it, and shows most a vacillation of modes, madcap, caper and earnest.

Lorne (2026)
Director Morgan Neville and co-writers Alan Lowe and Jake Hostetter use the limitations of the subject -- the well-established and professed refusal of Lorne Michaels to be a main subject, about Saturday Night Live or even his own story -- and the medium to make a sly portrait and tribute to the man who perhaps more than anyone is worthy of the term "showrunner."