Comedy films

It sounds like something dreamed up by a team of romantic comedy writers: A Pakistani-American comic falls in love with an American graduate student, but because of cultural pressures from his family, he is forced to keep the relationship a secret. It is only when she becomes mysteriously ill and is put into a medically induced coma that he decides to tell his family about the woman he loves.

The new film, Get Out, defies easy classification. Though it has funny moments, it's primarily a horror film, with racial anxiety at its center. Writer-director Jordan Peele tells Fresh Air's Terry Gross that he thinks of Get Out as a "social thriller."

For her first feature film, director Gillian Robespierre says she wanted to cast Jenny Slate in the role as an empowered, funny woman. They tell Fresh Air what shaped them as women in comedy.

The screenwriter, producer, director and actor, whose name has become synonymous with American comedy, talks about his penchant for spoofs and his decades-long friendship with Carl Reiner. Brooks is among a handful of people who've won Emmy, grammy, Oscar and Tony awards.

In 2013, "you really feel as if directors are taking chances in their storytelling," says film critic David Edelstein. He loved the movie Her, and says the biggest surprises of the year were All Is Lost and Much Ado About Nothing. He also explains why 12 Years a Slave didn't make his top 10.

In a sequel, Ron Burgundy makes the leap from local to national news. "We felt like we needed to jack up the stakes," says director and co-writer Adam McKay. He and star Will Ferrell join Terry Gross to talk about making movies -- and that epic 'statche.

Lake Bell's comedy In a World ... tracks a vocal coach's efforts to break into the male-dominated world of voice-overs. She and actor/voice-over artist Fred Melamed tell Terry Gross about what drew them to voice-over work, and the origins of the "sexy baby vocal virus" trend.

Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg met as adolescents on the Vancouver bar mitzvah circuit -- and soon after began writing the script for what would become the movie Superbad. Their project This Is the End, is a disaster-movie spoof in which the Rapture hits home in Hollywood.

Fresh Air's movie critic does not think any masterpieces were made this year, but he does compare Daniel Day Lewis to Julius Caesar and have some choice thoughts on the movie version of Les Mis.

The comedian spent seven seasons on Saturday Night Live and went on to star in the raunchy comedy Bridesmaids. Now she's exploring what's funny about parenting in the new movie Friends with Kids and the TV series Up All Night.