‘The Martian’ Is a Comedy (?!?) and the Most Egregious Golden Globe Miscategorizations Of All-Time

Word came down from the Hollywood Foreign Press Association late last week that Ridley Scott’s The Martian and David O. Russell’s Joy — both 20th Century Fox films — will compete in the Comedy/Musical categories at this year’s Golden Globe Awards, while Jay Roach’s Trumbo will have to battle it out among the dramas. While this categorization had been rumored for The Martian for some time, it’s a reversal of earlier reports that had Joy competing as a drama.
The reasoning for this from the studios’ end is simple opportunism. The field of award contenders (i.e. movies whose studios are actively campaigning for awards, including but not limited to the Globes) is much shallower among comedies, mostly because the Oscars hardly ever award comedies so why bother? And especially this year the field on the Comedy side of things is particularly empty of these contenders. So if your movie is a tweener, why not compete in the Comedy category, nab a few sure-thing nominations, and get that much bigger a boost going into the Oscar nomination process? The Martian might look too lightweight stacked up against something as harrowing as Room or as weighty in subject matter as Spotlight, but it’s Schindler’s List when stacked up against the likes of Trainwreck and Spy and Grandma.
This kind of gaming of the system can be annoying if you’re a comedy purist, or even just a stickler for precise definitions. Judd Apatow, director of Trainwreck, sure doesn’t seem to appreciate it, and he’s been openly Tweeting as such for weeks now.

Trying to dominate the comedy category when you are really a drama afraid of dramatic competition is a punk move. https://t.co/wIzGHCmeGx
— Judd Apatow (@JuddApatow) October 7, 2015

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Of course, Apatow’s personal stake in the matter should require a few grains of salt to accompany his comments, but he’s far from alone in thinking that The Martian is, at its core, a space drama with comedic elements. Or that David O. Russell has been peddling his films — which of late have trended towards dramatic/comedic mash-ups — as comedies with probably more success than they deserve. This is a problem with categorization everywhere, particularly these days when so many films and television shows blur the lines between comedy and drama. Just wait til Emmy season.

The problem with the Globes is that their categories don’t say “Funniest Motion Picture,” they say “Best Motion Picture: Comedy/Musical,” and there’s a world of difference in between. The elastic definitions of what constitutes comedy — and whether it has to necessarily make you laugh — go back to Shakespeare at least. Expecting the Hollywood Foreign Press to define it once and for all is probably a bit too much to ask.
Still, throughout their history, the Golden Globes have been rather accommodating when it comes to comedies that aren’t comedies. Just a few of their more eyebrow-raising categorizations.
The Wolf of Wall Street, 2013
The entire 2013 Musical/Comedy slate was practically engineered to give the Judd Apatows of the world an aneurysm. You had Inside Llewyn Davis (a typically Coen Brothers line-blurrer that was neither funny enough nor musical enough to qualify), Her (melancholy as heck, sure, but Spike Jonze!), American Hustle (David O. Russell striking again), and Nebraska (the most correctly categorized of the five, but the black-and-white stuff raised a few hackles anyway). Wolf of Wall Street was the worst, though. Purposefully obnoxious bombast from beginning to end does not equal comedy, nor does “funny … for a Scorsese movie,” no matter how many Gumby-limbed quaalude scenes you include.
My Week with Marilyn, 2011
As infuriating as admitting comedies that aren’t comedies can be, admitting musicals that aren’t musicals can be even more infuriating, because at least there you ought to be able to include a standard. There are films that blur this line a lot more successfully than Marilyn did, but I would still argue that movies about music — Ray (2004); The Rose (1979) — or, even more galling, movies with a pervasive and heralded soundtrack —Dirty Dancing (1987); The Big Chill (1983); Saturday Night Fever (1977) — do not nearly meet any kind of standard to qualify as “musicals.”
Almost Famous, 2000
You will find no bigger fan of Almost Famous than me, but I can’t see a scenario in which I would find Cameron Crowe’s film to be either comedic or musical enough to qualify. Crowe, like David O. Russell and the Coens, is a line-blender. His Jerry Maguire was also Musical/Comedy nominated when it maybe shouldn’t have been. That movie is a romantic drama with comedic elements. Look at the history of the Golden Globes and you will find a TON of romantic dramas with comedic elements in the musical/comedy categories.
The Fisher King, 1991
“Weird” does not mean “comedic.”
Dick Tracy, 1990
“Brightly colored” does not mean “comedic.”
Chocolat, 2000
“Lightweight to the point of inconsequentiality” does not mean “comedic.”
Jackie Brown, 1997
Tarantino might be the rare case where his movies actually do fit in either category. Certainly something like Inglourious Basterds feels purposefully oriented towards the comedic. So it’s weird that the only film of his to compete in the musical/comedy categories was Jackie Brown, perhaps the least comedic in his filmography save Reservoir Dogs.
Driving Miss Daisy, 1989
This might be the best example of the musical/comedy cheat. This movie is by no means a comedy. But it was definitely hunting for awards that year, and when stacked up against weighty movies like Born on the 4th of July, it might seem rather lightweight by comparison. So why be the wispy film about an old lady competing against Vietnam when you could be the film about racism competing against The Little Mermaid and When Harry Met Sally (both of those films are superior to Driving Miss Daisy anyway, but that’s a whole other gripe).