Skip to main content
  1. Home
  2. Entertainment
  3. Evergreens

Digital Trends may earn a commission when you buy through links on our site. Why trust us?

3 comedies on Prime Video you need to watch in January

Add as a preferred source on Google

It’s a new year, so it’s time to return to watching random movies at home. Something uplifting is what the doctor ordered, and that means when you snuggle up on the couch to watch a good movie, you might want to stick with a comedy.

Amazon Prime Video has great comedies, and the three comedies on Prime Video you need to watch in January are all recently released brand-new movies with impressive casts.

Recommended Videos

Freelance (2023)

Freelance (2023) Official Trailer - John Cena, Alison Brie, Juan Pablo Raba, Christian Slater

John Cena has been making tons of movies alongside starring as Peacemaker in the Max series of the same name. Freelance is one of the latest, and while critics have panned the movie, fans of the wrestler-turned-actor are loving it, regardless of how corny it might be.

In the action comedy, he’s Mason Pettits, a medically discharged U.S. Army Special Forces member. Now, years later, he’s working as a lawyer but hates his job. When he is presented with the opportunity to work as personal security for a journalist named Claire (Spin Me Around‘s Alison Brie), he jumps. There’s one issue: he has to travel with her to interview the dictator Mason failed to assassinate.

As action-comedy tropes would suggest, Mason and Claire find themselves fighting villains and running for their lives on an adventure that turns out to be more than they expected. Interestingly, while Freelance has an abysmal 7% Rotten Tomatoes score, the audience score on the same review aggregator site is a respectable 77%. Bottom line: if you’re looking for a feel-good, fan-service movie and love Cena, Freelance will be right up your alley.

Stream Freelance on Prime Video. 

Role Play (2023)

Role Play - Official Trailer | Prime Video

The Flight Attendant‘s Kaley Cuoco has impressed since the end of The Big Bang Theory, showing that she can play more than just a sarcastic woman with great one-liners. Her performances in both The Flight Attendant and Based on a True Story gave her tremendous credibility, which translates to this action thriller in which she stars alongside David Oyelowo.

The title is in reference to what married couple Emma (Cuoco) and Dave (Oyelowo) decide to do to spice things up in the bedroom. But in doing so, Dave discovers that there’s more to Emma than meets the eye. She’s not just a garden-variety suburban mom; she’s also a secret assassin for hire. Corny? Yes. Totally fun? Yes. For light viewing to ease you back into those darker shows to come, Role Play will help you disconnect and turn your brain off for an hour and a half.

Stream Role Play on Prime Video.

Bottoms (2023)

BOTTOMS | Official Red Band Trailer

Created by Rachel Sennott, who had a recurring role in the failed series The Idol, Bottoms is a hilarious satirical teen comedy from last year. Two lesbian high school seniors PJ (Sennott) and Josie (Ayo Edibiri) start their own fight club. At first, the purpose is to defend their actions when they purposely injured a mean quarterback, claiming it was practice for their feminist self-defense club. But they later realize a fight club is the perfect way to get the attention of the popular (and hot) cheerleaders.

Ironically, while the club is all about female empowerment, the ladies are only doing it to manipulate other women they want to bed. At its heart, however, Bottoms has a deeper message to deliver and accomplishes it in the most cleverly satirical way possible.

Stream Bottoms on Prime Video.

Christine Persaud
Christine has decades of experience in trade and consumer journalism. While she started her career writing exclusively about…
Grok’s AI-generated Odyssey series is seven minutes of nothing happening beautifully
The landscapes look convincing. The fake Hugh Jackman and Instagram-face amalgamation playing Penelope are harder to forgive.
Uniform ships Odyssey by Grok

Some of the best shots in Grok Imagine’s AI-made Odyssey don’t contain actors. Ancient landscapes stretch into the distance. Close-ups of grimy hands suggest people who have touched something rougher than a keyboard. For a few seconds, the illusion holds.

https://twitter.com/imagine/status/2113712964419063911

Read more
YouTube’s next big upgrade could make videos use 30% less data
AV2 could reduce the data needed to stream videos while enabling better HDR and multi-view experiences.
youtube-feature-upgrade-TV-4k

YouTube videos could soon look better without eating quite so much data, right? Thankfully, the platform plans to introduce a new video format called AV2 on its web player in early 2027, promising more efficient streaming and potentially fewer playback hiccups on slower internet connections. The big headline is a roughly 30% improvement in compression efficiency over AV1, YouTube's existing video format. That doesn't guarantee every video will use 30% less data, but it could make streaming a little easier on both internet connections and data allowances.

What is AV2, and why should viewers care?

Read more
YouTube is reworking the Home page with Custom Feeds and quicker access to Subscriptions
Saved Custom Feeds are rolling out as YouTube also experiments with a redesigned Home navigation bar.
YouTube custom feeds banner

YouTube is changing how its Home page works, giving viewers more control over what shows up there and making some of the app’s most-used sections easier to reach. Custom Feeds are now replacing the existing topic chips for eligible users, while YouTube is also testing a redesigned top bar on mobile that moves Subscriptions closer to the Home feed.

YouTube first started experimenting with Custom Feeds earlier this year, letting you type out what you wanted to watch and turning that request into its own stream of recommendations. Now, the feature is starting to look less like a side experiment and more like something YouTube actually wants people to use as part of their everyday Home page.

Read more