What these auteurs truly have in common, though, is that they have systematically boiled away many of the pleasures previously associated with comedy — first among these, jokes themselves — and replaced them with a different kind of lure: the appeal of spending two hours hanging out with a loose and jocular gang of goofy bros. (Also: ritual humiliation. Humiliation is a big part of it, too.)
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/29/magazine/the-hangover-and-the-age-of-the-jokeless-comedy.html?pagewanted=all on Apatow and the Phillips.