It’s not like the MTV Movie Awards mean a whole lot — compared to the almighty Oscars, that is—but the show did help me realize what seems to be missing in movie theaters today.

Among the many non-Oscarlike awards given at the ceremony was one for Best Comedy. The winner — “The Cable Guy.” Did anyone happen to see this movie? It was horrible.

The sad thing is, it was probably the best among its competition, which included “Beverly Hills Ninja” among others. And what’s even sadder is that I couldn’t think of a comedy from last year that deserved to win.

So where have all the comedies gone?

A lot of it has to do with competition. Moviemakers want to stay in the race, and you can’t blame them, but that means spending the big bucks on effects-driven action-thrillers.

Natural disaster and alien movies are dominating the theaters because we continue to spend our $6.25 (in Des Moines anyway) to see them. And the moviemakers aren’t going to stop until we do.

Every summer, a dozen or so movies are released that claim to be more action-packed, more technologically advanced and more expensive to make than the movies from the summer before. And lost in this limelight is the great American tradition of comedy.

But moviemakers aren’t the only ones to blame. One could look at the recent crop of Saturday Night Live actors and actresses to make the big screen and wonder what happened to the good old days of Chevy Chase, Steve Martin and Eddie Murphy.

Now it’s Adam Sandler, Chris Farley and David Spade — who are, without a doubt, very funny — but can they do more than their respective SNL characters?

Don’t get me wrong. “Billy Madison” is one of the greatest movies of all time, and “Happy Gilmore” is right up there, but Sandler’s big-screen performances don’t exactly scream originality.

And how many times can we laugh at a sweaty, accident-prone fat guy before it gets old? Farley’s career has been a smooth ride downhill since the release of “Tommy Boy.”

Now think back to the mid-’80s, when Chase was putting out both “Fletch” and “Vacation” movies, not to mention playing memorable characters in classic comedies like “Caddyshack” and “Spies Like Us.”

Martin was on a role with his solo comedies “The Jerk” and “The Lonely Guy,” while Murphy was not only adding humor to action films, but also teaming with fellow SNL actor Dan Aykroyd for “Trading Places.”

And then there was the breed of comedies which introduced young new actors such as Matthew Broderick (“Ferris Bueller’s Day Off”), Nicholas Cage (“Raising Arizona”), Judd Nelson and Sean Penn (“Fast Times at Ridgemont High”) and Anthony Michael-Hall (“Weird Science”).

So who is going to save comedy movies? Some believe Jim Carrey has potential, and his performances in “Ace Ventura” and “Liar Liar” support the theory. But even the ’90s king of comedy is limited to one type of character.

And it’s not like we can look to SNL, which has been ripped on by critics who say the show hasn’t been funny since Michael Myers and Dana Carvey left.

Both Chris Rock and Norm MacDonald have been successful with stand-up but lack of lead-role experience make them long shots as the saviours of comedy.

What the movie industry needs is for big-screen studs like Cage and Will Smith to stop the action-thriller nonsense for a while and give the ’90s some classic comedies.

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Corey Moss is a sophomore in journalism and mass communication from Urbandale.