Smoking Causes Coughing Trailer: French Comedy Serves Up Incompetent Superheroes And Lots Of Goop

Look, you're either on Quentin Dupieux's wavelength or you're not. Over the last 20+ years he's pumped out some of the weirdest, goofiest, most bizarre comedies you could possibly see. Most folks took notice of his film work with 2010's "Rubber," about a car tire that gains sentience and goes on a telekinetic killing spree (watch the trailer here if you don't believe me that this is a real movie — and it's good, I swear!). If that doesn't set you up for his patented brand of humor then nothing will.

His latest film is called "Smoking Causes Coughing," about a team of (mostly) middle-aged crime fighters in a "Power Rangers" style group who are starting to buckle under the stress of their job of saving the world from odd monsters and alien masterminds, so their puppet rat boss sends them on a sort of team-building retreat, which just happens to coincide with yet another world-ending threat that they keep putting on the back-burner in order to hammer out the kinks in their interpersonal relationships.

Yes, it's a comedy, and yes, it's very adult and supremely crude. There's an extended bit involving a metal scrapper that had me cracking up when I saw it at last year's Fantastic Fest.

The first full trailer just dropped for "Smoking Causes Coughing," and you can see it below if you want an idea of the craziness that you're in for. 

If you feel like you still have no idea what's going on, well ... that's kind of the vibe Dupieux's work sets, so it's not the trailer editor's fault. 

I personally really like that random sense of humor, which you can probably trace back to Mel Brooks and the team of Jim Abrahams and David and Jerry Zucker. The last act of "Blazing Saddles" and the entirety of "Airplane!" set me up perfectly to appreciate humor that leans towards the random, vulgar, and childish, so naturally I gravitate toward Dupieux's work. Not everyone will, of course, but for those who dig this kind of thing, there's nobody out there making comedies like these except for this mad Frenchman. 

While we get flashes of absurdist comedy in some big tentpoles (the MCU dabbles in this from time to time ... just look at M.O.D.O.K. in "Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania"), it's rare we get full on movies like this anymore. In fact, the last big movie I can think of that really embraced this kind of humor is "They Came Together," which skewered the traditional rom-com. Maybe Paul Rudd is the only one who can bring this humor to mainstream American audiences these days!

So, if you're like me and miss comedies that aren't afraid to go totally silly, then make sure to seek out "Smoking Causes Coughing" when it hits theaters and digital on March 31, 2023.