Farce is a very broad type of comedy, generally appearing in acted media. It's characterized by double entendres, misunderstandings, deceptions, and in general highly contrived and ridiculous situations. Contrived Coincidence, far from being problematic, is required in large doses by the Rule of Funny. Farce is almost never leisurely-paced; "breakneck" is more apt to describe it. Look for a lot of doors opening and shutting and characters stumbling upon other characters when they're in compromising situations/situations that appear compromising.
See the Mistaken for Index for all of the many misunderstandings in the genre. See "Fawlty Towers" Plot for farces specifically based on escalating lies and Armed Farces for farces specifically about military forces. Compare Screwball Comedy.
Examples:
- Farce was popularized by Georges Feydeau, whose La puce à l'oreille (A Flea in Her Ear) was one of the earliest examples of the classic form.
- Oscar Wilde's The Importance of Being Earnest is a very verbal sort of farce.
- Then there was Joe Orton, the 'Oscar Wilde of the Welfare State gentility,' who mixed farce and Black Comedy to hilarious effect.
- Black Comedy (1965)
- Boeing Boeing
- Cactus Flower
- La Cage aux folles
- Lend Me a Tenor
- The Matchmaker
- Noises Off
- The Norman Conquests
- Oscar
- Rumors
- Charley's Aunt
- The School for Scandal
- No Sex, Please, We're British
- The Man Who Came to Dinner
- A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum
- Pierre Corneille's Le Cid got the author into trouble with Cardinal Richelieu, who wasn't just a fictional Big Bad. Apparently mixing tragedy with farce was considered a bad thing in the 1700s, and the argument between the two even got its own cool sounding name, La Querelle du Cid.
- Cyrano de Bergerac: A similar example to La Querelle du Cid, Cyrano De Bergerac is a play which mixes Tragedy with Farce with great success, and it even presents Cardinal Richelieu... as The Ghost. It's characterized by misunderstandings, deceptions, and in general very contrived and ridiculous situations (Playing Cyrano, for instance), or the Gascon Cadets stumbling upon Cyrano and Christian when they're in a situation that appears compromising and a Fetch Quest... in the middle of the death of the protagonist.
- The Bride of Brackenloch
- Shakespeare loved this trope for his comedies, with The Comedy of Errors probably being the most overblown one of all.
- Accidental Death of an Anarchist
- The Play That Goes Wrong
Television
- Arrested Development.
- Fawlty Towers follows this formula quite closely, most episodes a snowballing sequence of things going from bad to worse via a combination of bad luck and Basil Fawlty's own magnetism for karmic retribution.
- I Love Lucy (without the innuendo and double entendres)
- Several Friends episodes relied on this, particularly ones that advanced the various story arcs.
- Several episodes of Coupling
- Frasier. Not an episode goes by without awkwardly hilarious crises opening up as characters frantically rush around and juggle lies as they try to hide their messes from each other at break-neck speeds, often causing waves of misunderstandings. Contrived Coincidences also figured prominently into many plots, generally following the format of someone overhearing a conversation or spotting something private, and drawing entirely the wrong conclusion and going hog-wild as a result.
- Three's Company was so archetypal an example of sitcom farce that many later shows explicitly refer to it when farcical situations are unfolding. It was even the Former Trope Namer for the entire Mistaken for Index, which used to be called simply "Three Is Company".
- 'Allo 'Allo!.
- In The Worst Week of My Life absolutely nothing seems to go right when things are calling for nothing to go wrong.
- The aptly named Royal Canadian Air Farce had several decades of breakneck political/cultural comedy under its belt before ending in 2012.
- As might be expected, French sitcom Les Filles d'à côté practically ran on this trope, with many episodes characterised by escalating misunderstandings between cast members.
- Schitt's Creek contains many farcical storylines as formerly wealthy Roses adjust, or in many cases refuse to adjust, to their rural town. An early example would be Johnny (Eugene Levy) making an awkward disaster of a eulogy and Moira (Catherine O'Hara) saving him by singing. A later episode when Johnny finds a positive pregnancy test thinking it is his daughter's and his ensuing talk to her is an excellent example of escalating misunderstanding.
- House of the Dragon: In the episode "King Of The Narrow Sea", Daemon and Rhaenyra watch a night performance of a farce satirizing a Succession Crisis between Rhaenyra, Daemon, and baby Aegon.
- The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power: In Numenor, the children watch a performance mocking the arrival of Galadriel in Numenor. Galadriel fights Sauron to defend Miriel from him, than she is shown bowing her head to him at the end of the play.
- A Slight Case of Murder
- Burn After Reading
- Clue
- The Dinner Game
- The Fifth Element: has various factions in the movie attempting to impersonate "Korben Dallas" in order to get on a cruise ship to get the cosmic trinket. Hilarity Ensues. Each faction has absolutely no contingency plan, and they end up interfering with each other to such an extent that Dallas manages to slip away.
- It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World
- Noises Off and The Bird Cage were both based on plays.
- The Danny Kaye film The Court Jester features double identities, hypnosis, a Gambit Pileup worthy of Death Note, broad comedy, and fast-paced patter.
- The Pink Panther films: Clouseau is completely unaware of his incompetence. A Shot In The Dark increases the stakes with the growing pile of bodies apparently murdered by Maria Gambrelli and Clouseau's absurdly steadfast belief in her innocence.
- A Shot in the Dark is also based on a French stage play which originally had nothing to do with The Pink Panther (1963) and which was not a farce but a murder mystery with some comic elements.
- The Oktoberfest scene in The Pink Panther Strikes Again is especially farcical. Dozens of assassins attempt to kill Clouseau and a mix of their competitiveness and the French detective's bumbling lead to them all wiping each other out without him even noticing.
- The Rules of the Game
Robert de la Cheyniest: Corneille! Put an end to this farce!Corneille: Which one, your lordship?
- True Lies is a farce, when it's not being a kick-ass action flick.
- In the Loop
- The Palm Beach Story
- Oscar
- Oscar
- The OSS 117 films with Jean Dujardin:
- Weekend at Bernie's
- Arsenic and Old Lace
- Tucker & Dale vs. Evil, although the "deception" aspect is largely supplanted by healthy doses of Wrong Genre Savvy.
- Death at a Funeral
- E
- Locklear Letters
- Lois McMaster Bujold's A Civil Campaign.
- Just about everything written by Tom Sharpe especially Wilt
- P. G. Wodehouse was the master of the literary farce. Everything flows from one misunderstanding or blunder to another, culminating to a perfect mess and an even more perfect rescue.
- Lucky Jim. Jim's tendency to force himself to do things he doesn't want to do, and tendency to lie to cover up his own mistakes leads to a plot full of hilarity and misunderstanding that pokes fun at the flaws of all the characters.
- Overlord (2012) is a combination of this and Black Comedy. The elder Lich "Ainz Ooal Gown" may seem to be a classic Sorcerous Overlord with godlike power and intelligence, but in truth he's a confused Japanese salaryman trapped in the body of his MMORPG character, who's bluffing desperately to stop his minions from realising how dumb he actually is. The Mood Whiplash sets in when Ainz's lieutenants "decipher" his "intricate plan" to Take Over the World, and start enacting it for him - as Ainz "reveals the details" of this plan it becomes increasingly clear that the combination of unlimited power, isolation and an undead body is dulling his sense of empathy, causing him to perform horrific actions just to maintain the bluff.
- Paranoia. Friend Computer always gives clear and correct orders. Missions never collapse into backstabbing, random events, being hauled off track by the agendas (or garden parties) of random higher-clearance citizens or secret society superiors, or being assigned to the wrong mission to begin with. Any rumors that the game falls into this genre are treason. Have a pleasant daycycle!
- The "Dinner for Six" arc in Penny and Aggie involves escalating misunderstandings, mistaken identities, compromising situations and contrived, Slapstick accidents.
- The premise of The Accidental Space Spy by Øyvind Thorsby is that the protagonist must pretend to be someone else. The protagonist usually also ends up in a farcical situation on each planet he visits, due to misunderstanding the local aliens.
- Lies, Sisters and Wives
by Øyvind Thorsby is a 34-page farce about a man with a wife and a mistress.
- Hitmen for Destiny by Øyvind Thorsby
- American Dad! derives much of its humor from this - many episodes start off with fairly typical sitcom plots and gradually escalate in absurdity until they reach a ridiculous, bizarre, and over-the-top climax.
- Archer: The episode "The Honeymooners" features Archer and Lana undercover as newlyweds while Cyril spies on them as they try and stop a sale of plutonium to some North Koreans. At the end of the episode, Mallory calls the operation a farce and Archer notes that this is in fact literally true, it was a farce.
- Futurama: "Into the Wild Green Yonder" hinges on this, particularly in the third act.
- My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic: "The Mean 6" sees the villain Chrysalis creating evil clones of the main heroes—clones who proceed to bicker between themselves and get mixed up among the heroes, without either side noticing. The heroes have a falling-out and then reconcile, without realizing that the villains were ever there, while Chrysalis's evil plan falls apart without any intervention from the heroes.
