This book is an examination of the "crap com" film genre, arguing for an aesthetic appreciation of the cycle's stylistic vigor - and reasons for its appeal - and a critical understanding of its cultural exclusionism.

The Crap Com Film theorizes a recent cycle of popular but critically panned comedy films. The titular label for this cycle, referencing both its critical reception and the source of much of these films' humor – non sequiturs, lowbrow sentiments, and indeed bowel movements and/or excrements – is the “crap com.” This book is a warts and all account of this popular but critically ignored genre and the culture it represents. Films examined in this book include: Girls Trip, The Heat!, Anchorman, Vacation, Night School,Bridesmaids, Dumb and Dumber, Naked, Train Wreck, and White Chicks, as well as all of Adam Sandler's films.

Using a combination of quantitative data collection, close textual analysis, and ideological critique, this book considers this cycle's history, its shared tropes and topoi, its toiletry aesthetic and appeal, and, importantly, its politics. For if the crap com's register resonates, it is because it shares a sense of humor with some, and a disdain for others: it tends to identify with, and appears to be predominantly viewed by, heterosexual (lower) middle-class men, more often than not white, whilst ridiculing those who suffer from unruly bowel movements or bodily disabilities, pride themselves on having higher education, are women, LGBTQ+, or are "foreign."

Jon Inge Faldalen is Associate Professor of Media and Screen Studies at the University of Oslo, Norway. He is the founder of the multi-million kroner research and teaching initiative Screen Cultures (2019-2023) at the University of Oslo.

Timotheus Vermeulen is Professor of Media, Culture and Society at the University of Oslo, Norway. His research is primarily in the disciplines of 'critical and cultural theory' and 'screen studies' but he also frequently writes and talks about art.