Now THAT was funny.

It wasn't a fruit pie, but it was a REAL pie -- and that makes all the difference.

Any good comedian knows that a real pie is funny. There's something about the weight, the heft, of a real pie as it hits its target with a satisfying splat, and then the combined ooze and drip of cream, filling, and crust which is funny in a way that some shaving cream on a flimsy paper plate isn't. The shaving-cream pie is amateur-hour stuff, the kind of locker-room horseplay indulged in by high-school ballplayers.

When Laurel & Hardy made their epic "Battle of the Century," the "Apocalypse Now" of pie-fight movies, they bought out several bakeries' worth of real pies. It was expensive, but they knew the success of the picture depended on their victims getting clobbered with genuine banana creams or coconut custards (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qFhcoRl796Q).

It's true in most things in life, but it's especially true in comedy: If you can't do it correctly, don't do it.