But movies about adolescent longing (as distinct, for the sake of argument, from adolescent lust) are the culture's last vital link to the great studio comedies of the 1930's.

Next year, more large-scale fare: Farrell stars in a remake of the Eighties comedy-horror Fright Night, as well as making an appearance in Horrible Bosses, a big studio comedy.

It's nonsense to expect social commentary from a high-concept comedy, especially one as self-congratulatory as this one (they care, they really, really care), but this is the rare studio comedy set in something like the real world.

We took the decision to make our set the same size that it would be in real life - much smaller than most studio comedy sets - and we built the entire layout, so you could walk from room to room.

The New Taiwanese Cinema identified with the French New Wave, rebelling against the previous Taiwanese studio comedies and melodramas and favoring real locations and socially conscious material.

The committee came up with four categories - best studio comedy, best independent comedy, best first- time director and the audience award - and mailed ballots to 300 comedy writers, directors, actors and producers.

In contrast, Variety gave a more positive review for the film, saying that Mosely "makes her low-budget enterprise look as slick as most midrange studio comedies, demonstrating herself a director with both imagination and technical ingenuity".

Kael, who was born in 1919, grew up on the exuberant, tough-minded studio comedies of the 1930's, in which love was a kind of spirited intellectual and erotic combat, an exhilarating, passionate battle of wits.

This points to a crucial imbalance in studio comedies: distinctive secondary roles for women barely exist.