Adam McKay of 2023 is clearly not the same artist who co-founded Funny or Die, or co-wrote Anchorman with Will Ferrell, or served as head writer for Saturday Night Live when the show put on sketches like “NPR’s Delicious Dish: Schweddy Balls.” And that’s to be expected — after spending nearly 30 years at the top of American comedy, McKay is an unmistakably more mature writer and comedian than he was when he was freewheeling through 30 Rockefeller Plaza in his 20s.
However, as possibly the last great American comedy film writer and director, McKay’s recent comedies have been such a startling departure from his early work that it feels as if he’s abandoned important aspects of his filmmaking that first made him a Hollywood star. While Anchorman, Talladega Nights and Step Brothers certainly didn’t have the biting satire of Don’t Look Up or Vice, they did have things like “jokes” and “levity” that made audiences “laugh.”
In the last decade, McKay has taken it upon himself to use humor in order to speak truth to power, just as every politically minded comedian has aspired to do since the court jesters of yore. But effective satire has more key ingredients than just a clear political bent, and those fools didn’t earn the right to mock the king by eschewing the pointy hats and pratfalls in favor of bullet-pointed speeches on income inequality.