Still, the sorry state of film comedy is less a matter of too much in-your-face, smug scatology than it is a failure of nerve. Because comedy is hard--and because the marketplace favors laffs 'n' tears or laffs 'n' action for the broadest possible appeal--few filmmakers are willing to make an out-and-out comedy and label it as such. A case in point is Life, a buddy movie and prison period piece that stars two comedians but is played as much for drama as for laughs.

Eddie Murphy plays a 1930s sharpie and bootlegger who makes a moonshine run to Mississippi with a newly hired bank clerk, Martin Lawrence, who owes a gangster money. The twosome are framed for murder by a local cop and sentenced to life in a work camp. The film follows our heroes for the next 60 years, as they plot various escapes and learn to get along.

Murphy and Lawrence are both terrific; it's clear they enjoy getting to chew on material that's more substantial than usual. The director, Ted Demme, working from a gang-written script, keeps the film from being overly maudlin or overly shticky. Unfortunately, he keeps it from being overly anything. Life avoids the tasty metaphor of two black men yearning to be free; in fact, it zooms through 20th-century history in montage and never allows the two leads to comment on the changing face of black America. The film isn't even that funny until late in the second half, when Murphy and Lawrence slip into old-age makeup and mumbly, profane patter. (Something about disguises always brings out the best in Murphy.)

Life is yet another in a string of comedies that skimp on laughs in the service of supposedly more serious intentions. How else would you describe the likes of Lock, Stock, and Two Smoking Barrels or Go? Neither are really thrillers or dramas, and they're not funny enough to be called comedies--a fact that may explain why neither film completely works. Life, like those two indie faves, is afraid to commit to being either serious or zany. Unlike them, however, it's afraid to confront its audience with anything even remotely disturbing.

It's not entirely fair to pick on Life, which is admittedly entertaining and even amusing at times. Until the closing blooper reel, though, it's never truly hilarious--a serious mistake, no matter how well intentioned. Notably, a few jokes from the trailer have been excised, which indicates that Demme and crew deliberately scaled back the humor. If so, why? For the sake of what? We don't need another sentimental middlebrow brain fogger. What we need are some good jokes.