First, Ed Burns' material is really dry and sometimes boring. He is not a comic actor. Like me, his face is too serious. He's excellent in dramas, though.
As for "tricky" I don't see writing comedy that way, at least in movies. I think it requires certain actors, but the foundations of comedy has been well laid - Chaplin, The 3 Stooges, Laurel and Hardy, Peter Sellers, Benny Hill, Steve Martin, and on and on... As a writer, you can research and call upon useful examples.
Pain, embarrassment, shocked reactions, exaggerations, etc. are funny. Obviously, you don't want to see a kid in pain, so you write a character that is maybe a bit despicable, mean, egotistic or is durable and clumsy - you know, like the guys that the HOME ALONE kid beats up.
Ben Stiller zipping up his private parts sounds cruel, but reactions from everyone who see it - the dad, the cop, the fireman - make it funny. If you want to lead your audience towards how you want them to think, you use the reactions of other characters, an odd sound, or funny sounding music, etc.
Mr. Creosote is so fat and scares all the talking fish, when he enters the restaurant. He starts barfing all over the place. Well this could be just plain gross, except that the waiter (John Cleese) keeps a straight face, while serving this guy. It elevates, when a cleaning lady comes in wipe up the floor and Creosote starts barfing on her back. That would be cruel to do to an actress, but the lady is a guy in drag! The situation is so exaggerated that you start to laugh at the great lengths this scene goes to.
Again, the right chemistry or actor/actress is key to making comedy work. Often, it is people who are good with exaggerated expressions (Kramer from SEINFELD or Jim Carrey) or pronounced facial features, like Marty Feldman and those big eyes. Hollywood has often made the wrong casting choices. Remember them considering Steve McQueen for SUPERMAN, which fortunately went to Christopher Reeve. Imagine MY COUSIN VINNY, if Joe Pesci wasn't in it??? Imagine if BACK TO THE FUTURE kept Eric Stoltz in the part, instead of finng him and going for Michael J. Fox?
Now, what is hard, is subtle dialogue. This does not translate well to other countries, so if you're that kind of writer, you're probably screwed, unless you get a sitcom. On the other hand, the French love the clumsy antics of Jerry Lewis and his ilk.
I've made quite a few comedy shorts and they were usually gag based, such as two guys trying to get a dragon out of their garage. When they try to intimidate the monster, it breathes fire and burns their clothes off. One guys big baseball bat is little burning stick. All this time, you haven't seen the dragon, just his POV, looking at these guys. When you finally do see it, it's just a little lizard held in front of the camera, like this:
Now this was on Super 8mm, so no After Effects; the dragon really is just being held in front of the camera. People were laughing so loud, you couldn't hear what the character was saying. A lot of why that worked, was the anticipation of whether we would actually see it or not - kind of like Ben Stiller's zipper, when they actually defy your expectations and show it. It's ridiculous looking. That's what timing is about.
BTW, I also liked MY SUPER EX-GIRLFRIEND. It had a lot of gag comedy and I'm a sucker for that. Uma played the part pretty serious and in that case the absurdity of the gags or situation took center stage.
Do you have an actor who is good at impersonating the President or another political figure. Pick any bad guy in the world and make him look foolish, whether it was Sadaam in HOT SHOTS: PART DEUX or Kim Jong-Il in TEAM AMERICA - good for laughs if you have a good actor or puppet!
Lastly, I remember going to see the movie AIRPLANE! at the theater. My whole family was not laughing, as they had never seen that kind of humor, before. However, a group of people, in the back of the theater, kept laughing, hysterically. Half way through the movie, we were all laughing. Laughter is contagious. I hope theaters never go away, because the audience experience can make a movie. I've seen movies multiple times and it really depends on what audience shows up. Reactions differ from show to show.
This guy, you can just look at and laugh. I'm a jokester, at heart, but my look is too serious.
). Thanks for the review on it, though. It's a pity because she gets these great roles sometimes in horrid movies(The Avengers also comes to mind).
). But I like dark humor, it goes with my cynical nature 
.